Paris (AFP)

The plane chartered because of the new coronavirus to repatriate 28 Chinese and 36 nationals of other European Union countries from China has arrived at Roissy airport, it was learned on Friday from an airport source.

The third plane chartered by Paris since the start of the crisis, the plane left Thursday from Wuhan, the epicenter of the virus epidemic. French returnees must be placed in quarantine in a holiday village in Calvados (Normandy) where they must be confined there for 14 days.

The other European passengers must be "taken care of, upon arrival, by the authorities of their country", according to the Quai d'Orsay.

The aircraft, an Airbus A380, had been chartered by Paris with the main objective of transporting medical equipment freight for Chinese medical personnel in the province of Hubei, the most affected by the epidemic, according to a diplomatic source.

But his return flight to France was an opportunity to repatriate around sixty French and European nationals who wanted it, she added.

Two other French repatriation flights had already been organized and a British plane had also evacuated around thirty French people on February 9.

On all three of these flights, more than 300 people have already been repatriated from China to France and placed in quarantine in two places of accommodation in Bouches-du-Rhône.

Most of them have left and the last 35 returnees, who arrived on February 9 via London, are due to leave on February 23.

Pending the tests of the new returnees on Friday, the balance sheet of the epidemic remains unchanged in France: twelve cases of coronavirus infection have been confirmed in total - four hospitalizations without signs of severity, seven people healed and one death.

In China, the death toll now exceeds 2,100 dead and 74,500 people infected, according to the latest official figures released Thursday.

On Wednesday, the World Health Organization (WHO) praised the "enormous progress" made at the international level to curb the spread.

However, the epidemic rebounded in South Korea on Friday, where 100 new cases of Covid-19 disease were diagnosed, mostly among members of a Christian sect.

What bring the balance sheet to more than 200 infected patients in the country and make it the second world focus of the epidemic outside the liner Diamond Princess in Japan, whose thousands of passengers have been gradually evacuated for several days.

© 2020 AFP