India Reports Its First Case of Coronavirus

India said a patient in the southern state of Kerala had tested positive for novel coronavirus on Thursday, the first occurrence in China-born virus nation that has killed 170 people so far.

The patient was a student of China's Wuhan University, the government of India said in a statement. The patient is stable, the statement added and isolated at a hospital.

A senior Indian government official said bringing Indian nationals from Wuhan, the epicenter of the virus, was not the best option due to the risk of infection but increased pressure from the citizens, most of them are students, and their parents had forced them to keep an aircraft on standby.

This week, India readied a state-carrier airplane to travel to Wuhan but was waiting for a nod from Chinese authorities who were trying to sequence the whole evacuation process.

"Only those nationals who don't have the virus will be airlifted, they will be brought into a quarantine facility outside Delhi," the official said, requesting anonymity.

Demands from South Asian nationals intensified after countries such as the United States and Japan began pulling out their nationals.

Source: Reuters