Several protesters in a town in Ukraine attacked buses transporting evacuees fleeing from the coronavirus outbreak in China.
The protesters attacked the buses bringing the evacuees from China to a health spa in Novi Sanzhary, in the central Poltava region of Ukraine. The Chinese evacuees will be quarantined for 14 days.
A total of 45 Ukrainians and 27 foreign nationals were flown from Wuhan to Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine. They were then transported in six buses to the health spa in Novi Sanzhary, where they were blocked by protesters lighting bonfires and hurling stones.
The government deployed armored personnel carriers in the town. The police and the national guard eventually managed to unblock the road to the health spa. The country's health ministry assured that there were no sick passengers.
In order to calm the protesters, Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk, Health Minister Zoryana Skaletska and Interior Minister Arsen Avakov all traveled to the city.
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky called on the protesters to show empathy to the evacuees. According to the Security Service of Ukraine, a fake email claiming to be from the health ministry circulated, falsely claiming that some evacuees had contracted the virus.
Security service officials released a statement saying they are currently conducting investigations on the hoax. Currently, Ukraine has zero confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus, officially named COVID-19.
To express her solidarity with the evacuees, Ukraine's Health Minister Zoryana Skaletska said she will be joining the quarantine and would run her ministry via Skype. In a Facebook post, she wrote: "I hope that my presence there will calm those in Novi Sanzhary, as well as the rest of the country."
President Zelensky asked the people to show compassion and refrain from protesting. He said: "Most of the passengers are people under 30. They are almost like children to many of us."
"But there is another danger that I would like to mention. The danger of forgetting that we are all human and we are all Ukrainians. Each of us - including those who ended up in Wuhan during the epidemic," he added.
