MANILA, Philippines — AirAsia will coordinate with the Department of Health (DOH) on the details of flights concerning the third confirmed case of the new coronavirus involving a 60-year-old Chinese woman.
“AirAsia is ready and willing to provide relevant documents to the DOH, including the flight manifest and available contact details of guests on board the flight, given the urgency of this situation,” said a statement issued by the airline on Wednesday.
“The operating flight crews have also been quarantined in compliance with the Philippine government’s travel ban,” it added.
The DOH earlier revealed that the patient returned to Shenzhen, China through an AirAsia Flight from Cebu on Jan. 31 after initial tests were conducted at the Victorian Infectious Diseases Reference Laboratory in Melbourne, Australia and the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine in Muntinlupa.
On Feb. 3, the RITM told the DOH that the Jan. 23 patient’s samples tested positive for nCoV infection.
According to the DOH, it’s still trying to contact the woman in China.
AirAsia also noted that it recorded a flight going to Shenzhen from Cebu with flight number Z2 7800. The flight left Cebu on Jan. 31 at 11:35 p.m. (PHT) and arrived in Shenzhen at 2:40 a.m. (PHT).
Health Undersecretary Eric Domingo disclosed that the patient came from Wuhan in Hubei province of China via a Cebu Pacific flight on Jan. 20.
Domingo said she went to Bohol a day later where she was admitted to a hospital after experiencing fever and coryza, or a runny nose.
After the initial samples tested negative for nCoV infection, the Chinese woman was allowed to return to China as there was no imposed travel ban going to and from China at that time.
President Rodrigo Duterte only ordered travel restrictions to China on Feb. 2 after a 44-year-old man from Wuhan, where the new virus originated, died after succumbing to severe pneumonia caused by nCoV.
/atm