Police called as residents protest school use for coronavirus quarantine

National Police crowd control teams were called to Pacora, east of the capital city on Monday, February 3  as residents near the Father Guardia Jaén school protested the use of the facility to house and quarantine 33 students who returned to Panama from China, on Sunday.

Health authorities planned to keep them in quarantine and under observation in the gymnasium of the educational campus for 14 days. Residents of the nearby  Los Alamos neighborhood, fearing the students could be carrying the new coronavirus that has killed nearly 500 people in China and infected hundreds of thousands consider the students a danger to their health, and demand that they are removed from the site.

After the National Police arrived, to maintain order protesters said they will not clear the area until the students are removed reports TVN,

The  Ministry of Health Minsa) reiterated, that none of the young people who arrived in the country are ill or have symptoms of the coronavirus(2019-nCoV).

Health authorities will keep students isolated for 14 days in preventive monitoring. We have taken steps to have them together to prevent them from being stigmatized and protect their identity

He said that they can move freely within the school premises, which was inspected by the Deputy Minister of Health, Luis Francisco Sucre.

Sucre said that the school was chosen because of its size since it will house all the young people from China.

The Minsa said the student monitoring process began from China and is endorsed by the World Health Organization (WHO). It complies with sanitary measures based on the international sanitary code and regulation, he said.

It was explained that before discharging the students they will have a laboratory test in which they take a sample of the secretions of the throat, called nasopharyngeal swab, which is performed by specialists of the Gorgas Memorial Institute for the diagnosis of infections viral respiratory

Parents of the students have written on social networks that their children were in the cities of Shanghai and Suzhou, which are not close to Wuhan, the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak.