Professionals who completed studies in China helping health dept

KOCHI: Continuing with efforts to check the spread of coronavirus, the health department has set up a team comprising doctors and other professionals conversant in Mandarin to interact with Chinese tourists staying in hotels and homestays in the district.

And the team led by Dr Abin, who is quite fluent in Mandarin, on Wednesday visited a homestay in Kochi and interacted with four woman Chinese travellers staying in Kerala for the past one week. “The team comprises  both government and private doctors able to speak Mandarin. As Mandarin interpreters are hard to come by,  the doctors and other members are assisting the department. Most of the team members had studied in China,” said N K Kuttappan, district medical officer .  According to a health department official, “The Chinese tourists whom the team spoke to said they had arrived here on January 24. They had visited Mumbai before coming down here. They are from a place situated around 2,000 km away from corona-hit Wuhan. They are scheduled to fly back home on Thursday”.

“The hotels and homestay owners inform us about the arrival of Chinese tourists. Following this, we go there and interact with the travellers. We also provide awareness to  hotel and homestay owners about the precautions to be taken while dealing with tourists from China. Most of the tourists here had flown out of China before the corona outbreak,” the official said.