By CNN Philippines Staff / Published Jan 24, 2020  at CNN

Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, January 24) – Close to 500 Chinese tourists who arrived in Kalibo, Aklan from the Chinese city where the novel coronavirus outbreak began, will be transported back to their point of origin this week, an aviation official confirmed Friday.

Civil Aviation Board Executive Director Carmelo Arcilla said that air carriers Royal Air Charter and Pan Pacific Airline will ferry the visitors back to Wuhan in three batches: Friday night, Saturday and Monday. The planes will then return to Kalibo without passengers. That’s despite the transport clampdown in Wuhan, where the new virus called 2019-nCoV originated.

Pan Pacific operates charter flights on the Wuhan-Kalibo route Tuesdays to Sundays while Royal Air on Mondays to Saturdays. Those flights have since been suspended except for the three “ferry flights” to bring home the nearly 500 tourists from Kalibo.

Three cities in central China, including Wuhan, the city of 11 million people, are under lockdown, as Chinese authorities race to contain a deadly virus that has reached parts Asia and the United States. CNN reported that at least 26 people have died and 830 others infected in China as of Friday.

Arcilla said the airlines have the clearance to repatriate the foreigners because they are Wuhan residents.

Wyrlou Samodio, CAB’s chief legal officer, said the tourists’ return to China were based on the decision of the two charter companies, who coordinated with Wuhan authorities, and the Philippine aviation board’s directive to suspend flights to and from that Chinese city.

He said some of the tourists were already due to return home, while others had to cut short or could not extend their trips because of the suspension of flights to Wuhan.

Among them are the 135 foreigners who flew in Thursday, hours before Philippine authorities announced that as a precautionary measure, it will suspend flights to and from Wuhan, Aklan Provincial Health Officer Cornelio Cuachon said Friday.

None of them was quarantined and referred for hospital care as they did not show the red flag symptoms of the 2019-nCoV such as fever. Read more…