BEIJING, February 22. /TASS/. Russian diplomats provided assistance to US nationals during their recent operation to evacuate Russians from the Chinese city of Wuhan, Russian embassy officials told reporters on Saturday. A thing to note is that the officials remained under quarantine in one of the embassy’s buildings until Friday night.

"The [Russian] flag proved really helpful. It was kind of a chaos situation [at Wuhan Tianhe Airport - TASS] because there were a lot of Americans, more than 400, but there were no US officials. People coming to the airport were clearly distressed, many of them were frightened, many did not speak Chinese well, or at all. When these poor things saw our flag, we told them that ‘This is Russia,’ and they asked us: ‘And where is the US?’" Embassy First Secretary Konstantin Nevezhkin said.

"We had to make a banner reading ‘USA’ and containing information about the section where Americans could register. However, we had to take a couple of elderly people to that section because they just couldn’t make head or tail of the situation," he added. "We then started asking foreigners who came up to our stand if they knew whose flag it was, and they said it was Russia’s. So we asked why they had come up to us then? And they answered, ‘because we know you will help us anyway," the diplomat pointed out.

On February 5, two military planes evacuated 144 people, including Russians and foreign nationals, from Wuhan to the Siberian city of Tyumen. Upon arrival in Russia, they were taken to a health camp 28 kilometers away from the city for a 14-day quarantine. On February 18, Head of the Russian consumer watchdog in the Tuymen region Galina Sharukho said, citing results of medical tests conducted by the Tyumen Region Infection Pathology Research Institute, that all evacuees had tested negative for the novel coronavirus.

The Washington Post wrote earlier that US nationals seeking to be evacuated from Wuhan "described scenes of chaos at the airport, with no officials there to help them and not even a sign indicating where to gather." "This was in contrast to the Russian evacuation, where consular officials had set up an information desk with a Russian flag and had provided buses to bring Russian citizens through the checkpoints into the airport," the newspaper added.

Coronavirus outbreak

In late December 2019, Chinese authorities notified the World Health Organization (WHO) about the outbreak of a previously unknown pneumonia in the city of Wuhan, central China. Coronavirus cases have also been reported in 27 other countries, including Russia.

According to Chinese authorities, about 76,300 people have been infected with the virus in the country. The death toll has passed 2,300, while over 20,600 patients have recovered.

The WHO declared the outbreak of the novel coronavirus a global health emergency and named the virus COVID-19.