IRKUTSK, January 25. /TASS/. Five students of Baikal State University who are citizens of China where an outbreak of a novel coronavirus has been recently registered have been hospitalized with a respiratory disease but are also being screened for possible viral pneumonia, Chief Doctor of the Irkutsk Regional Clinical Hospital Vladimir Khabudayev said on Saturday.
"The administration of Baikal State University approached me over the fact that several students from China who are studying at this higher educational institution did not come to classes. It turned out that these students had fallen ill two or three days ago. They went home for the vacation and fit into the incubation period for the coronavirus infection. Five persons were hospitalized," the chief doctor said.
"As of today, their disease is known: all of them have Type A flu - a seasonal illness for this time of the year. But in order to fully rule out the coronavirus infection, we have sent the material [for medical tests] to Novosibirsk," Khabudayev said, adding that the doctors expected the test results on Saturday night.
The Chinese authorities informed the World Health Organization (WHO) on December 31, 2019 about the outbreak of pneumonia of unknown origin in Wuhan, a large trade and industrial center with a population of over 11 million people. The pathogen, the 2019-nCoV coronavirus, was identified on January 7.
The novel coronavirus cases have also been reported in Australia, Vietnam, South Korea, Singapore, the United States, Thailand, France and Japan. The WHO has recognized the virus outbreak as a national emergency for China but has so far refrained from declaring it a global health emergency.