Health Ministry prepares accommodation area at QAIA for passengers with coronavirus

AMMAN — A hall has been prepared at Queen Alia International Airport (QAIA) to accommodate up to 400 people if passengers are found to be infected with coronavirus, while the airport's health personnel have examined over a thousand passengers so far over the past few days.

Director of the airport’s health centre Sarhan Al Sarhan told The Jordan Times that the Health Ministry set up the room and provided QAIA with back-up personnel in case the need to isolate a passenger with a Coronavirus infection should arise.

This comes at a time when Director General of Bashir Hospital Mahmoud Zureikat announced in a statement that a military plane has taken off from Marka Military Airport to transport Jordanian students from China to the Kingdom.

Al Sarhan noted that the plane will land on a special runway that is otherwise used for emergency purposes, and that the passengers on board will be dealt with by a “trained and equipped” medical emergency team.

He stressed that all cadres in the airport have received training by a team from Zarqa Governmental Hospital, adding that two doctors and a number of trained medical and nursing cadres are already on board the military plane.

Zureikat revealed that the students will be transferred to an isolation centre in Bashir Hospital’s Epidemiological Department, and that they will be kept in quarantine for 14 days according to the health protocols in force.

So far, the centre is monitoring four people, three of whom are Jordanian students who were studying in China, and the fourth a Chinese worker who recently came from Wuhan.