30 Vietnamese return from epicenter of deadly virus outbreak

The HVN68 flight, which flew from Hanoi's Noi Bai International Airport at 9 p.m. Sunday to deliver Vietnamese aids including medical equipment to Wuhan, arrived in Wuhan  at around 1 a.m. (local time) Monday. 

It then picked up 30 Vietnamese citizens from the city and landed in Quang Ninh Province's Van Don International Airport at 5:04 a.m.

Vietnamese workers returning from Wuhan (blue) go through medical checks at Van Don airport in Quang Ninh Province, February 10, 2020. Photo by VnExpress.

A separate parking lot was reserved for the plane in the airport, so that its arrival would not affect the airport's general operations, said Pham Ngoc Sau, director of the Van Don International Airport.

Passengers and crew members on the plane underwent body temperature checks and had their luggage disinfected. The latest quarantine details haven’t been revealed yet.

Under the original plan, those who exhibited symptoms associated with the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) symptoms would be quarantined and brought to the Van Don District Medical Center. The rest would be escorted into the airport's quarantine zone for immigration procedures before being handed over to the provincial Military Command to be brought to another quarantine zone for 14 days.

The Van Don International Airport is the only airport in northern Vietnam to receive Vietnamese coming back from Wuhan per a government order.

Vietnam officially declared the 2019-nCoV outbreak an epidemic on February 1. Out of the 14 confirmed cases so far, three have been discharged from the hospital: a Nha Trang hotel receptionist, a Chinese man from Wuhan, and one of the workers who returned from Wuhan.

The global death toll of the epidemic has reached 910 – one each in the Philippines and Hong Kong, and the remaining in mainland China.