TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – Several of the 300 Taiwanese stuck in the Chinese city of Wuhan amid a lockdown to contain the spread of novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) have asked the island’s semi-official Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) for assistance, reports said Monday (Jan. 27).
The organization’s emergency hotline received several calls during the Lunar New Year holiday from Taiwanese citizens caught in Wuhan after traveling there for business, holidays or family visits, CNA reported. One of the more desperate cases involved a man who wanted to return home to Taiwan to witness his wife give birth.
Some Taiwanese complained of practically being chased from their hotel because they had come down with a slight fever, according to SEF’s statements to CNA. Their relatives worried that if they had to leave the hotel to visit a hospital, they would be at even more of catching the virus.
Another Taiwanese was reportedly running out of medical supplies for an unrelated ailment and was worried about having to turn to a local hospital in Wuhan. The people who needed assistance the most were those who did not have a fixed address in the Hubei provincial capital, but had arrived there for a short business or holiday visit and wanted to return to Taiwan as soon as possible, SEF said.
The semi-governmental body was collecting information and passing it on to the relevant cabinet-level departments for further action, according to the CNA report.
An estimated 300 Taiwanese nationals were staying in Wuhan, most of them business people. Taiwan recorded its fifth case of the coronavirus Monday, a woman in her 50s from central Taiwan who had recently worked in Wuhan.
