Minister says 80 Indian students still in Wuhan

INDIAN External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said on Friday (7) that 80 Indian students are still living in the coronavirus-hit Chinese city of Wuhan.

He added that 70 of them chose to stay behind at the time of the evacuation operation.

The minister said that the Indian Embassy in China is in touch with all the students in Wuhan and the Central government is regularly monitoring their situation.

The minister revealed that 10 among these 80 students had expressed willingness to return to India but could not board the special Air India flight as they failed the screening process.

As many as 640 Indians and 7 Maldivians had returned to New Delhi last week on two special Air India flights from Wuhan, which has been the epicentre of the new strain of coronavirus.

Jaishankar has said that the country has extended the offer of evacuating people from Wuhan to all its neighbouring countries including Pakistan, but the only Maldives chose to take up the offer.

“We were prepared to bring back not only our people but also those from all our neighbourhood who would have liked to. This was an offer which was made to all our neighbours but only seven nationals of Maldives chose to avail the offer,” Jaishankar said.

This is an alarming situation as the three positive cases reported from India so far are from the South Indian state of Kerala. Latest reports suggest that the situation of these patients is stable.

But, there may be positive cases among those 80 Indian citizens stranded in Wuhan, China.