PUNE: A Chinese man was on Friday admitted to a hospital here for possible exposure to novel coronavirus after he vomited on Pune-bound Air India flight from Delhi, officials said.
The passenger was isolated and shifted to the civic-run Naidu Hospital after the flight arrived at the Pune airport around 7 am, an Air India official said.
"The passenger was travelling from Delhi to Pune on Air India flight. He complained of nausea and vomited on board. After the plane landed at the Pune airport, he was immediately isolated and shifted to Naidu Hospital," the official said.
Chief health officer of the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC), Dr Ramchandra Hankare, said the passenger is a Chinese national.
"On his arrival, he was isolated and taken to Naidu Hospital. His swab and blood samples have been sent to the National Institute of Virology (NIV) for analysis," he said.
The plane was later sanitised, which delayed its return journey to Delhi.
"The flight, which was supposed to take off for Delhi around 7.40 am, got delayed as it was cleaned and sanitised," an airport official said.
Naidu Hospital in Pune is one of the three hospitals in Maharashtra, where quarantine facilities have been set up to deal with the suspected cases of coronavirus.
No confirmed case of the deadly virus, which has so far killed 630 people in China, has been detected in Maharashtra yet.
The virus - which first emerged in Wuhan city in China's central Hubei province - has spread to 25 countries, including India (three confirmed cases have been reported from Kerala), the US and the UK.