1. Skip to content
  2. Skip to main menu
  3. Skip to more DW sites

Quarantine ends for Germany's coronavirus evacuees

February 16, 2020

The German military flew back over 100 people from Wuhan, the city at the center of the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak. After 14-days quarantine it's time for the Wuhan evacuees to leave.

https://p.dw.com/p/3Xquo
Red Cross members stand in a circle outside the Germersheim barracks
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/F. Rumpenhorst

More than 100 evacuees were given the all-clear to leave the military barracks in Germersheim, Germany, on Sunday. They had been quarantined there for 14-days, after the German Air Force evacuated them from the coronavirus epicenter of Wuhan, in China.

The quarantine ended as results from further tests for the coronavirus COVID-19 came back negative, said a spokesperson for the Air Force.

The German government sent a military plane at the beginning of February to evacuate its citizens from Wuhan, Hubei province, after the Chinese government began enforcing a city-wide quarantine.

There were 122 people on the flight, the majority of whom were German citizens. Two of the evacuees on board tested positive to the virus and were taken to be treated in isolation at a hospital in Frankfurt. The two patients were declared symptom-free and released on Friday.

The remainder spent two weeks at a military base in the town south of Frankfurt.

They were cared for by 22 Red Cross workers who will also be able to leave the barracks, reported local newspaper die Rheinpfalz.

The latest figures of COVID-19 in Germany stands at 16. Most of the cases were linked to a training session held by a German-Chinese company in Bavaria, where an infected colleague from Wuhan was in attendance.

Kate Martyr
Kate Martyr Editor and video producer at DW's Asia Desk and News Digital