Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield announced that two State Department-chartered evacuation flights from Wuhan, China, arrived Wednesday, carrying some 350 passengers out of the country where the deadly novel coronavirus has been spreading as U.S. officials prepared for a long fight to slow spread of the disease.
One of the aircraft will refuel at Travis and continue to Miramar Marine Corps Air Station in San Diego County, the base reported on Facebook. The evacuees at Travis will be quarantined at the base’s Westwind Inn hotel for 14 days, overseen by personnel from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“We do not believe these people pose a threat to communities where they are being housed,” said Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, in a Wednesday news briefing.
Messonnier stressed that the number of confirmed U.S. cases remains at 11 with no reported deaths and tests pending on 76 others.
“I’m happy to report that the U.S. patients, the ones who are here, are really doing well,” Messonnier said. “The ones who were sicker have improved.”
Two more chartered planes from China are expected to arrive by Thursday at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, and another at Eppley Airfield in Omaha, Nebraska, Messonnier said. She did not have a count of the total number of evacuees on all four planes.
The news comes as health authorities in the U.S. and around the world scramble to contain the novel coronavirus epidemic that erupted in China last month, where the World Health Organization reported Wednesday it has sickened nearly 24,554 and killed 491. Outside of China, the virus has sickened nearly 200 in 24 countries including the U.S., with two reported fatalities, one in the Philippines and another outside mainland China in Hong Kong.
The 11 confirmed U.S. cases include six in California — four of them in the Bay Area.On Tuesday, Santa Clara County health authorities said five workers at Good Samaritan Hospital who had been exposed to the first of two patients who were confirmed to be infected with the virus in the county were sent home for 11 days to avoid exposing others, though they were not reported to be ill.
U.S. authorities imposed enhanced screening of airline passengers, barring entry of foreign nationals who have traveled to Wuhan in recent weeks and subjecting U.S. citizens, family members and legal residents who recently traveled to mainland China to health screening and possible 14-day quarantine.
A number of airlines have canceled flights to and from China amid plummeting demand as businesses curtail travel to the country and tourism evaporates. United Airlines announced that Wednesday would be its last flight out of China until at least March 28.
Messonnier said the aggressive response is aimed at slowing the spread of the novel coronavirus into the U.S., allowing time to prepare and distribute diagnostic testing kits and an eventual vaccine. While the disease has spread rapidly in mainland China, its reach into the U.S. and other countries has been slower.
“What was different about this one outbreak is that it was caught so early,” Messonnier said. “We have this opportunity to intervene before it can spread around the world.”
Last week, a plane carrying 195 Americans — mostly State Department employees and their children — landed at March Air Reserve Base in Riverside County. On Monday, one of the children on that flight was hospitalized after developing a fever. The child was tested for coronavirus, Riverside County officials said Monday, and results are expected later this week.
Messonnier said the evacuees quarantined at Travis “are getting medical evaluations as part of the normal course of action.”
“I think that they are going about daily lives there as best they can,” Messonnier said. “They are grateful to be home, very cooperative. We know it’s not an easy thing for them to do.”
The novel coronavirus is from the same family as the SARS and MERS viruses that caused outbreaks in 2003 and 2012. The SARS outbreak in 2003 infected 8,096 and killed 774, according to WHO. MERS has infected 2,494 since 2012, of which 858 have died, according to WHO.
Messonnier said the novel coronavirus appears to be fatal in about 2 percent of infections, but cautioned that information is still preliminary and it’s difficult to draw conclusions about the severity of the disease.
“What we know is this disease can be deadly,” Messonnier said. “We know death is possible.”
Dr. Robert Quigley, senior vice president and regional medical director of International SOS and MedAire, major security and medical travel risk firm with experience in evacuation and quarantine protocols, said that the uncertainty around the coronavirus, its origin, and its virulence is the main cause for concern.
“The 2019 novel coronavirus infection appears to be much more infectious than what we’ve seen with previous corona viruses causing pandemics,” Quigley said Wednesday. “This Coronavirus seems to be gathering strength over time. So although the severity of symptoms seems to be less, the overall impact may be as great, if not greater, as other global pandemics in the past despite the global efforts to contain it.”
Quigley said that in evacuation and quarantine situations like those taken to Travis, evacuees typically have access to group activities such as Zumba classes. If someone develops symptoms, he said the person likely will be isolated from the rest of the group to avoid further contamination. The people caring for them are typically protected with gear designed to prevent infection, and often are required to stay in housing near where the evacuees are being monitored throughout the quarantine.
The San Bernardino Sun contributed to this report.
