A number of Finnish citizens stranded in the Chinese city of Wuhan landed in Paris on Friday morning after an EU-organised evacuation flight from China.
Wuhan has been cut off since late January, when Chinese authorities implemented strict quarantine measures to try and stem the spread of novel coronavirus, now known as COVID-19.
Finland’s Foreign Ministry has not confirmed how many Finns were on the French flight.
Those who arrived on the plane now face two weeks in quarantine before they are allowed to travel home. Individuals with symptoms related to novel coronavirus were not allowed to travel on the plane.
The French daily Le Parisien reported that the aircraft carried 28 French citizens and 36 foreign nationals. The paper added that the passengers would be quarantined at holiday village in Normandy for two weeks after disembarking.
Another group of Finns joined a previous French flight out of Wuhan, with a similar fortnight of quarantine mandated on that occasion as well.
Helsingin Sanomat was the first to report that Finns were on Friday’s evacuation flight.
Finland has recorded one case of the new virus. That patient, a Chinese tourist in Lapland, made a full recovery and left hospital.
More than 2,200 people are known to have died from the virus, most of them in mainland China.
Edit: Updated at 18.04 with additional reporting by Le Parisien newspaper about the nationalities of passengers on the flight and their quarantine location.