A Canadian government employee and five flight crew members have been released early from a new coronavirus quarantine in Ontario, Canada‘s chief medical officer says.
In a statement released Monday morning, Dr. Theresa Tam said she had authorized the early release of five flight crew members who accompanied Canadians returning from Wuhan, China from Vancouver to Canadian Forces Base (CFB) Trenton.
She said a government employee who boarded the first repatriation flight in Hanoi to provide support on the flight from Wuhan to CFB Trenton has also been cleared for release.
“In my assessment, I took into account the fact that they did not spend time in the epicentre of the outbreak, that they followed appropriate infection prevention and control protocols (including the use of personal protective equipment), and that they did not have unprotected contact with passengers or persons at risk of having the novel coronavirus,” Tam said in the statement. “As a result of this assessment, I have determined that their continued quarantine is not required.”
Since late last week, more than 200 Canadians have been evacuated from Wuhan, where the new coronavirus is believed to have originated.
They have been under a mandatory 14-day quarantine at the base, located about 175 kilometres east of Toronto, in order to prevent the possible spread of the virus, currently known as 2019-nCoV.
Monday’s news comes just a day after Tam announced that Canadian Armed Forces medical staff who accompanied the returning travellers would be leaving the quarantine early.
In a statement, Tam said the individuals “do not pose a risk of significant harm to public health.”
So far, Tam said no one at CFB Trenton has shown signs of the virus.
Meanwhile, on Sunday, a second plane left Canada to collect the remaining citizens seeking repatriation from China.
Speaking to reporters on Monday, Foreign Affairs Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne said the second plane was “on the ground” in China.
“The manifest shows that there will be about 200 Canadians on the second plane which, when the boarding is completed will leave Wuhan obviously to go to Trenton,” he said.
There are 236 Canadians waiting to board the plane from Wuhan, which has been under quarantine for weeks as Chinese authorities try to contain the virus’s spread, Canadian officials said Sunday.
As of Monday, the virus had infected more than 40,600 people globally and killed more than 900.
In Canada, seven cases of the virus have been confirmed, four of them in British Columbia and three in Ontario.
— With files from Global News’ Kerri Breen and the Canadian Press
