Evacuated Americans pass coronavirus screenings

More than 200 Americans who had been quarantined in Wuhan, China, due to the spread of the coronavirus were evacuated via plane Tuesday.

All of the passengers passed the health screening when the plane stopped to refuel in Anchorage, Alaska. 

The passengers were screened twice before departing Wuhan and then twice again when they landed in Alaska by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), The Associated Press reports.

The plane later landed at March Air Reserve Base near Riverside, Calif.

A Pentagon spokesperson said Department of Defense personnel would not come in contact with the evacuees, who will not have access to any areas of the facility other than their assigned housing. 

“Should routine monitoring of the evacuees identify ill individuals, [Health and Human Services] has procedures in place to transport them to a local civilian hospital,” the spokesperson added.

Federal health officials said any passengers who exhibit symptoms will be transported to a hospital for further evaluations.

The passengers will be asked to stay in base housing to allow CDC medical officers to perform more thorough screening and to better understand each person’s exposure, they added.

Wuhan is at the center of the coronavirus outbreak and has been completely locked down by the Chinese government. Access to 16 additional cities has also been by prohibited by Beijing, making it the largest quarantine in modern history and trapping an estimated 50 million people.

The White House chartered a plane to Wuhan to evacuate diplomats and employees of the U.S. Consulate in Wuhan. According to Time, the remaining seats on the plane were sold for $1,000, and non-U.S. citizens, even those who are family of American citizens, were not allowed on the plane.

About 1,000 American citizens remain in Wuhan as of Wednesday.

“I’ve actually been a little bit annoyed at the p—-poor treatment,” Justin Steece, a Lake George, Minn., native, told Time. “Why is it that American citizens have to pay $1,000 and not have our families come with us? It’s bulls—.”

Steece, who served in the National Guard for five years before moving to Wuhan, has a newborn child who hasn’t been registered as a U.S. citizen yet. His wife is a Chinese national.

Another American in Wuhan — 38-year-old Benjamin Wilson — told the magazine that he was in a similar situation, as his 7-year-old daughter has a U.S. passport but his wife is a Chinese citizen.

The U.S. policy concerning moving its citizens and their loved ones out of Wuhan is also at odds with the practices of other countries around the world, the magazine reports.

A spokesperson at the U.S Embassy in Beijing told Time in an email that “the health and safety of U.S. citizens, including the employees of U.S. Consulate General Wuhan, is our top priority.”

However, there has yet to be reports of another flight to evacuate U.S. citizens from the quarantine that has no end in sight.

The Hill has reached out to the State Department for comment.

Updated at 3:45 p.m.