Kochi: Fifteen students from Kerala, who were stranded in Hubei province of China following the outbreak of the deadly Coronavirus have landed at the Cochin International Airport Limited and undergone a thermal screening for the infection, airport officials said.
The students travelled to Bangkok from Kunming Airport and then took an Air Asia flight to reach here, they said.
When the flight reached Kochi at 11 pm on Friday, they were directly taken to the Kalamassery Medical College Hospital in five sterilised ambulances.
The students have been admitted to an isolation ward of the hospital, the officials said.
Relatives of the students had reached the airport but they were not allowed to meet them.
The had planned to fly from China on February 2 but a delay in the visa process prompted them to postpone it. The students reached the airport, which was 400 km away from their hostels, by bullet train on Thursday. However, just before boarding, the airline denied them the trip. The students approached the Kunming airport authorities but to no avail. Following this, they were forced to spend the night in a shop outside the airport.
Later, the Union Minister of State for External Affairs V Muraleedharan intervened and contacted the Thai Airlines, which agreed to bring the stranded students to Kochi.
Two other students who were part of the group flew to Tamil Nadu from Bangkok.
(With PTI inputs)
