Evacuations related to the COVID-19 pandemic
COVID-19 evacuation timeline / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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This article lists major evacuations conducted by several countries as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The SARS-CoV-2 virus was first identified in the city of Wuhan, Hubei, China in mid-December 2019, when a group of people developed a pneumonia without clear causes, and existing treatments were found to be ineffective. The novel coronavirus has similar characteristics to severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS). Within a number of weeks, several thousand people in Hubei's provincial capital of Wuhan were infected, and the Chinese central government imposed strict containment measures, including a lockdown of Hubei itself.
Due to the effective lockdown of Wuhan and Hubei, and the continued growth of the outbreak in these locations, several countries planned to evacuate their citizens and/or diplomatic staff from the area. This was done primarily through chartered flights of the home nations, which were provided prior clearance by Chinese authorities. Australia,[1] Belgium,[2] France, Germany, India,[3] Indonesia,[4] Japan, the Philippines,[5] Sri Lanka, Thailand,[6] and the United States[7] were among the first to plan the evacuation of their citizens.[8] Pakistan has said that it will not be evacuating any citizens from China due to lack of domestic facilities to help treat Pakistanis who may be infected.[9][10]