Evacuation flights set to go

Americans and the Japanese are the first batch of foreigners to be evacuated from Wuhan, the epicenter of the new coronavius epidemic.

A mercy flight from Wuhan to San Francisco will depart today, as Germany and Cambodia confirmed their first cases of coronavirus while Japan announced the first confirmed case of a patient who fell sick without prior travel to China.

The United States had organized a chartered California-bound flight with limited space scheduled to leave Wuhan yesterday with consular staff and some American citizens, but the US State Department said, without giving a reason, that the flight was postponed, and will set off today.

Meanwhile, Japan's charter flight reached Wuhan last night as their Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi said the flight carried around 200 passengers, but added that about 650 citizens hope to return home.

Motegi added that Tokyo is making arrangements for extra flights and will leave Japan for Wuhan as early as today.

Several other countries were also working to repatriate their people, including South Korea, India and France which are going to send charter flights to the epicenter in the coming week.

In Japan, the Japanese health minister, Katsunobu Kayo, said the patient with no travel history to China is a bus driver, in his 60s, who drove two groups of Chinese tourists from Wuhan this month in Nara. This brings the number of confirmed infections in Japan to six.

Germany also declared yesterday its first confirmed case of the coronavirus.

Bavaria's health ministry said late on Monday that a man in the town of Starnberg, 30 kilometers southwest of Munich, had been confirmed as suffering from the virus.

The patient is in "good condition" and isolated under medical observation, the ministry in the southern state said in a statement posted on its website.

It did not disclose any details of the patient's age or nationality.

German Health Minister Jens Spahn said he was not surprised the virus had reached Germany, but added: "The risk to the health of people in Germany from the new respiratory disease from China remains low."

Elsewhere in Cambodia, the first case of coronavirus has been confirmed, Health Minister Mam Bunheng said on Monday.

The patient is a Chinese man who came with his family from Wuhan to the coastal city of Sihanoukville this month.

Mam said the patient left Wuhan on Thursday and developed a fever two days later, and is now in stable condition.

Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Ma Zhaoxu told foreign diplomats on Monday hat Beijing will fulfill its international obligations and promptly address legitimate concerns of foreign citizens in China.

In a briefing on the outbreak, Ma noted that an all-round and multi-level prevention and control system has been built, while stressing that China has conducted active international cooperation since the outbreak in Wuhan.

"With the institutional advantages and previous useful experience, the Chinese government has the confidence of controlling and eventually overcoming the novel coronavirus epidemic," Ma said, adding that Beijing is deeply grateful for the understanding and support from the global society.