Swiss return from coronavirus quarantine in France
The Swiss nationals and their Chinese family members who left Wuhan were quarantined on February 2 in France.
Keystone / Sebastien Nogier
The quarantine of five Swiss nationals and three Chinese relatives who had been repatriated from Wuhan to France ended on Saturday evening as planned. None of them contracted the coronavirus.
Six of those quarantined – four Swiss nationals and two Chinese – returned safely to Switzerland on Sunday in a bus chartered by the Swiss foreign affairs department. The two others declined the offer of Swiss authorities and chose to return on their own.
The eight people had been repatriated from Wuhan, the epicentre of the coronavirus outbreak, by the French authorities and quarantined on February 2 in Aix-en-Provence. During their stay in France, they were accompanied by staff of the Swiss consulate in Marseille and were able to communicate with their relatives without any problems, according to a spokesperson from the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs.
The news comes as the first death in Europe from the virus was recorded over the weekend in France and the total number infected globally reached nearly 70,000.
On Friday, the Federal Office of Public Health provided an update on the situation in Switzerland indicating that around 250 people have been tested so far for the novel coronavirus, or COVID-19, in Switzerland. But none of the samplesExternal link have tested positive.
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France has offered to fly the ten people to Marseilles where they will be quarantined for 14 days when they arrive. Officials said that all Swiss citizens in China are healthy and reiterated that there are no cases of Coronavirus in Switzerland so far. The Swiss foreign ministry said there are more than 4,000 Swiss…
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