By Angela Oketch, NAIROBI Kenya
The Chinese government will evacuate 400 of its nationals
from Kenya, with the first batch of 200 having left Tuesday at 11pm over fears
of Covid-19.
The evacuees procured
their tickets on Sunday night but because of the social-distancing rule, all
could not fit in the China Southern Airlines plane.
“The remaining 200 will
leave in the course of the week. We were expecting all of them to leave at
once, but considering the social-distance rule and the new sitting arrangement,
they could not leave at once,” said their lawyer Isaac Okinyo.
The final arrangements,
he said, were made after the Ministry of Foreign Affairs gave the lawyer the
go-ahead to evacuate his clients.
Mr Okinyo told the Nation that
the Chinese had earlier requested their embassy and the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs to leave the country but they both declined.
This prompted him to
move to the High Court, where he obtained an order directing the Kenyan
government to allow them to leave on June 16, arguing that Kenya’s health
system does not have the capacity to handle the pandemic.
Justice Weldon Korir
issued the orders after the lawyer sought special permission to allow
evacuation flights to take them home. The lawyer served the Foreign Affairs
ministry with the order last week and he received a no-objection response on
Saturday evening.
“We received a no
objection response and all the arrangements were concluded on Sunday,” he said.
Earlier, after the
Saturday Nation published a story titled “Chinese nationals flee the country
over fear of Covid-19”, Xueqing Huang, chief of the information and public
affairs section at the Embassy of China, wrote to Clifford Machoka, head of
Corporate and Regulatory Affairs at Nation Media Group, with claims that the
article was not factual and that no flight would be leaving Nairobi to China on
June 16.
“I wish to draw your
attention to today’s Nation report (Saturday, June 14) which is basically
misinformation. There is no flight from Nairobi to China next week, let alone
any Chinese fleeing Nairobi led by Ambassador Wu Peng,” Mr Huang wrote.
He continues: “We hope
your journalists or editors could do necessary check on the facts before they
publish anything. They can reach out to the embassy to inquire about China
facts.”
The Chinese are
claiming that Kenya’s health system cannot handle huge infection numbers if the
pandemic spreads rapidly. They argued that they have a better chance of
treatment in China, as Kenya does not have enough health facilities and
equipment to manage coronavirus patients.
“They have underlying
conditions and others just don’t feel safe here. All the isolation centres are
full, testing and contact tracing is a big deal to the Kenyan government,” Mr
Okinyo said.
China was ground zero
for the novel coronavirus after it alerted the World Health Organization on December
31, 2019 about several cases of unusual pneumonia in Wuhan, a city of 11
million people.
What started as an
epidemic in China has now become a global pandemic, infecting more than seven
million people and killing at least 432,000 people worldwide, according to the
Johns Hopkins University Covid-19 dashboard, which collates information from
national and international health authorities.
The virus has spread to about 200 countries, with the US, Brazil and Russia experiencing the most widespread outbreaks, followed by the UK, Spain and Italy. Kenya has confirmed 3,860 cases and 105 deaths as at Tuesday. - Daily Nation
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