January 25, 2020
China Eastern airline has cancelled its flights from Wuhan City, Hubei Province of China, to Yangon and Mandalay from 24 January to 29 February in response to the coronavirus outbreak that sent the Chinese city into lockdown.
According to the World Health Organization, several cases of pneumonia first surfaced in the last week of December in 2019 but the virus did not match any other known virus.
China’s Ministry of Health then confirmed on 7 January 2020 that they had identified a new virus. It belongs to the coronavirus group, a large family of viruses that include the SARS and MERS viruses that had surfaced before. This new virus is temporarily named ‘2019-nCoV’.
The Ministry of Transport and Communications and the Ministry of Health and Sports have been increasing screening for the novel coronavirus on all airplanes that have flown from Wuhan and other parts of China at Yangon International Airport since 8 January 2020.
The Department of Civil Aviation announced on 23 January 2020 that they have found no cases of the virus, regarding their checks at the airport.—GNLM (Translated by Zaw Htet Oo)
