Ten Saudi students who were evacuated from China’s Wuhan region are not infected with the new coronavirus, the Saudi Health Ministry announced on Monday.
The students had returned to the Kingdom on Sunday and will be transferred to a Riyadh hospital for a 14-day quarantine period.
First tests showed that they were not infected with the virus. Additional tests will be performed during their time in quarantine.
Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman bin Abdulaziz and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defense, had ordered the evacuation of the Saudis from Wuhan, where the virus is believed to have first emerged.
The evacuation process took place smoothly between Saudi and Chinese authorities. The Ministry of Health has sought to the students’ care and has taken all necessary precautions.
The Foreign Ministry is arranging the evacuation of remaining Saudi nationals in China.
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabian Airlines stopped all flights between Riyadh and Jeddah to Guangzhou in China, starting on Sunday and until further notice.
Last week, Health Minister Tawfiq Al Rabiah announced that no cases of the coronavirus was reported in Saudi Arabia.
The Ministry of Health is implementing a number of precautionary measures to prevent the spread of the virus to the Kingdom by means of screening all arrivals from China via direct and indirect flights.
Between January 20 and February 2, 62 samples were screened and all tested negative for the coronavirus, said the ministry. It said that 3,152 passengers coming from China via direct flights and 868 via indirect flights were screened during this period, adding that it provided medical teams around the clock at all land, sea and air ports.
The ministry’s National Health Laboratory has developed the necessary capabilities to detect the virus in record time since the detection of the first communicable case in China and prior to the WHO's declaration that the outbreak is of international concern.
The new coronavirus has killed 361 people as of Sunday and infected more than 17,000.
The flu-like virus emerged late last year in the central city of Wuhan, where it is believed to have originated in a market illegally trading in wildlife.
Since then, the virus has been declared a global emergency and spread to more than two dozen other countries and regions, with the first death outside of China reported on Sunday, that of a 44-year-old Chinese man who died in the Philippines after traveling from Wuhan.
