Coronavirus: US military base quarantine for 350 Americans who fled outbreak zone in China

Two jets with US citizens escaping coronavirus land in California and are now subject to a 14-day federal quarantine

Miramar and Travis bases are two of the four US facilities tapped to house quarantined Americans

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The Westwind Inn at Travis Air Force Base in California is one of four US facilities tapped to house quarantined Americans. Photo: AP

Published: 11:53am, 6 Feb 2020Updated: 12:04pm, 6 Feb 2020

Another group of nearly 350 Americans airlifted from the epicentre of China’s fast-spreading coronavirus outbreak were placed under quarantine at two military bases in California, as the number of confirmed US cases of the disease rose to 12.

The travellers aboard two State Department-chartered cargo jets were met by personnel from the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for screening, and were to remain under mandatory quarantine for 14 days, the incubation period of the virus.

Five of the passengers arrived exhibiting possible symptoms, two of them children, and were immediately hospitalised, along with the mother of one of the youngsters, the CDC said.

The latest evacuees, together with 195 Americans flown out of Wuhan, China, a week ago by the US government, bring to 540 the number people subject so far to the CDC’s first public health quarantine in 50 years. Wuhan, in China’s Hubei province, is the epicentre of the disease.

The two planes in Wednesday’s airlift arrived at Travis Air Force Base in northern California, where 178 passengers from one plane disembarked to begin two weeks of round-the-clock health screening while barred from contact with the general public.

The Westwind Inn lodging facility at Travis Air Force Base. Photo: AP