KOCHI: On Wednesday morning, Faizal Nazar, a fifth-year medical student at Wuhan University School of Medicine got a call from the Indian Embassy in Beijing.
Faizal, a native of Kerala's Karunagappally, was asked to send details of 56 Indian students who are still at the university. Without wasting time, he quickly collated a list since the Indian Embassy there wanted to evacuate the students as soon as possible.
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'There is a chance we might leave by Thursday afternoon,' said Faizal. 'But nothing is confirmed yet. The embassy people told me a Boeing 747 is getting prepared.'
All the students are feeling scared and nervous. But they have been asked not to step out of the 20-acre campus by the Chinese government. The university, which is government-run, is providing free meals at all times. 'They are trying their best,' said Faizal.
He says the students were amazed that the government built a 1000 bed hospital in six days at Wuhan. 'We cannot imagine a hospital being built so fast in India,' says Faizal. 'The reason is that they want to place all the coronavirus patients in one place. Otherwise, there is a risk of the virus mutating.'
The university has announced that classes will begin only on March 1. But Faizal feels that this break will last till April. 'It is a grave crisis,' he says.
The deadly coronavirus continues to wreak havoc in China with 25 new fatalities reported from Hubei province, taking the death toll to 132 and the confirmed infection cases to nearly 6,000. Wuhan, the hub of transport and industry in central China, was the epicentre of the fast-spreading Coronavirus.