12 with fever quarantined for pneumonia check in Da Nang

By Nguyen Dong   January 26, 2020 | 01:40 am PT
12 with fever quarantined for pneumonia check in Da Nang
An area at Da Nang Hospital is quarantined for treatment patients with suspected coronavirus infection. Photo courtesy of Da Nang Hospital.
Da Nang Hospital in central Vietnam is putting 12 people with high fever in quarantine for coronavirus infection tests.

Among them are seven Chinese, three Vietnamese and one from the Czech Republic.

"None of the Chinese are from Wuhan," Dr. Nguyen Thanh Trung, Vice Director of Da Nang Hospital, said Sunday. A pneumonia outbreak, caused by a new strain of the coronavirus family that caused SARS and MERS, surfaced in Wuhan last December and has killed 56 people in China.

"These people had high fever and most of them are Chinese tourists, the rest are hotel, resort and airport staff that had contact with them," Trung said.

When receiving a patient suspected to be infected with the nCoV virus, Da Nang Hospital will arrange a separate route for a sterilized vehicle to transport the patient directly to the tropical disease department, to avoid the virus from spreading to other patients.

At the tropical disease department, the 4th floor is completely separated from others to monitor and treat patients suspected with the coronavirus.

"The quarantine and monitoring of patients is under the control of the hospital," Trung said.

Da Nang has yet recorded any case of pneumonia caused by coronavirus. On January 14, two tourists from Wuhan were quarantined with high body temperature. But their test results later came back negative with the  Wuhan pneumonia virus.

The last flight from Wuhan to Da Nang on January 22, before the city lockdown, brought 218 people to Da Nang.

The company that organized the tour said it had contacted and brought 52 people back to China, via flights to Hunan province. It's expected to bring all of the tourists back by January 27.

From January 24 to 30, Da Nang is expected to welcome a total of 93 flights from China. The city's Department of Tourism has requested hotels in the area to immediately notify it when any guest shows signs of pneumonia.

Vietnam confirmed the first two cases of nCoV pneumonia infection on Thursday. The Chinese patients, who are father and son, are being quarantined at Cho Ray Hospital in HCMC for treatment.

The disease has also spread to Thailand, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Macau, Hong Kong, the United States, Singapore, Malaysia, France and Canada, sickening more than 1,900 people.

 
 
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