Head of Iran’s Emergency Medical Services Pirhossein Kowlivand said on Friday that the Iranian students residing in China will be returned home by a special aircraft so that they will not be infected with the disease.

Addressing Tehran province’s special working group of coronavirus late on Friday, he added that the province is in charge of housing the students after arriving in the country and it will prepare a suitable environment for them.

Under the current situation, one cannot hide somebody’s illness and proper policies should be adopted, he said, adding that appropriate place should be considered to quarantine these students.

The coronavirus, also known as the Wuhan virus, is similar to pneumonia which causes severe fever and shortness of breath has also transmitted to the other countries, including the US, in addition to China.

In a meeting with Iranian Health Minister Saeed Namaki, Chinese Ambassador to Tehran Chang Hua said that Beijing believes that the international community should help the Chinese government in the fight against the deadly virus to eradicate the epidemic.

The Chinese ambassador to the United Nations office in Vienna says Beijing is fully confident it has the capacity to defeat the deadly outbreak of the new coronavirus. He did acknowledge, however, that there is still “a lot” that researchers do not know about it.

The Chinese mission in Vienna says all non-essential meetings and side events hosted by China here have been canceled and a decision has been made to downsize delegations from China in the case of essential meetings.

Medical authorities say the key message now is preventive measures which are recommended regularly for the flu season.

Wuhan is in a virtual lockdown, and nearly all flights at the city’s airport have been canceled and checkpoints block the main roads leading out of town. Authorities have imposed similar lockdowns on more than 10 cities near Wuhan as part of the ongoing containment effort.

The coronavirus has caused alarm because of its similarity to SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome), which killed nearly 650 people across mainland China and Hong Kong in 2002-2003. Like SARS, it can spread among people through the respiratory tract. The first case of the new virus was confirmed on December 31, 2019.

The virus has since been detected in more than 2 countries including, Japan, Hong Kong, Macau, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore, and the United States.

The Coronavirus was first seen in late December 2019 in Wuhan, central China and so far it has claimed the lives of more than 250 Chinese nationals in mainland China.

At least 11,791 people have been infected in China by the new coronavirus, according to new figures from China’s health officials.

Most of the latest fatalities are from Hubei province. The city of Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak is located in Hubei.

Another 17,888 people are suspected of being infected, while 243 have been discharged, according to a separate report by China’s state-owned international channel, CGTN.