Coronavirus: India rescues 7 Maldivians in Wuhan, Foreign Minister expresses gratitude

Maldives foreign minister Abdulla Shahid thanked India and its leadership for evacuating seven Maldivians from China along with Indians aboard an Air India flight on Sunday.  second Air India flight carrying 323 Indian citizens and seven Maldivians landed in New Delhi on Sunday morning after it took off in intervening night of February 1 and 2 in wake of vel Coronavirus outbreak which has claimed over 300 lives in China as per latest reports with number of people infected crossing 14,000 across country.

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In his tweets, Abdulla Shahid expressed his gratitude to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and External Affairs Minister Dr S Jaishankar. He lauded efforts of India's envoy to China Vikram Misri and to Maldives Sunjay Sudhir.  He also thanked Chinese authorities for ir assistance.

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World Health Organisation (WHO) had initially played down on severity of pandemic citing fewer cases outside China, however, later called it a global health emergency on Thursday.

Evacuation amid pandemic fears

government of India started evacuating its citizens from China with its first Air Inda flight bringing back 324 citizens on Saturday. Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Turkey, Germany also evacuated its citizens on Saturday. Multiple countries across world have t only started evacuating it's citizens from country but have also started imposing travel restrictions for Chinese nationals and those coming from country. Countries such as Russia, Australia and US have imposed a travel ban and have also closed borders for those coming from China.

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(Im credit: PTI)