A TOTAL of 163 passengers on a flight from the Republic of Korea (ROK) to the city of Weihai, East China’s Shandong Province, are now under medical observation after five passengers were reported to have a fever, local authorities said yesterday.

Operated by a Chinese airline, the flight departed from Incheon International Airport, ROK and arrived at Weihai International Airport at 10:15 a.m. Tuesday, the Weihai government said.

An on-site inspection found that five passengers on the flight had abnormal body temperature. So far, the nationalities of the five are unknown.

Among the 163 passengers, 19 are natives of ROK, three are Americans, one from Ukraine and the rest are Chinese.

The five passengers have been sent to hospitals for diagnosis and medical observation. The rest of the passengers have been sent to a designated hotel for further observation, the local government said.

In another development, authorities in Nanjing quarantined 94 air passengers arriving from Seoul after three people on the flight were discovered to have fevers.

The three passengers, all Chinese, arrived in the capital city of Jiangsu on Tuesday morning and were discovered after customs personnel boarded the aircraft on landing to screen passengers for symptoms, CCTV said.

The three were immediately sent by ambulance to a hospital for isolation and testing, while 94 people who had sat near them on the plane were sent to a hotel to be quarantined, CCTV said.

None of the three people with fevers had any history of travel to Wuhan, the city where the outbreak originated.

Also, Yantai City in Shandong Province will provide free nucleic acid tests for all travelers arriving from abroad amid efforts to prevent and control novel coronavirus pneumonia, the city’s government said yesterday afternoon. (Xinhua, China Daily)