VANCOUVER—Canada is getting ready to evacuate some citizens from the coronavirus quarantine zone in the city of Wuhan — Sherry Renner just doesn’t know yet if her pregnant daughter will be on the flight.

Renner’s daughter Lauren Williams and husband Tom made headlines this week when they publicly called on the Canadian government to help them get out of Wuhan before the birth of their next child. Renner said she’s been “glued to the news,” ever since, waiting for information that could offer a glimmer of hope to her family.

“We are glad to hear they are sending a plane,” said the Langley, B.C., woman of the planned evacuation. Since Tom is British, the couple had reached out to U.K. officials to ask for evacuation assistance as well, and was waiting to hear back about whether they could get on a British flight out of the country.

At 35 weeks pregnant, it’s a matter of urgency for Williams and her family, who have lived in China for about five years. With the number of novel coronavirus cases surpassing 6,000, Renner said the main worry is getting space in a hospital, and not exposing the newborn to a dangerous virus.

“They’ll go with whoever confirms them first,” Renner said. But their preference would be to come home to Canada, where they were planning on returning in June.

The federal government has chartered a plane but still needs China’s permission to fly Canadians out of that country’s coronavirus quarantine zone, Foreign Affairs Minister François-Philippe Champagne said Wednesday.

The evacuation is being planned as the impact of the deadly virus continues to be felt around the world. Airlines have cancelled scores of flights to China amid tight travel restrictions in the affected region, and Ottawa is urging all Canadians to avoid going to mainland China unless it is necessary.

By Wednesday afternoon, 160 Canadians had asked Ottawa to help get them out of Hubei province.

One of the people who got in touch with the government was Myriam Larouche, a Quebec student on exchange in Wuhan.

“I got an email from my university back in Canada with instructions to get my papers together just in case,” she said. “Everybody wishes to go back home.”

Wuhan, Larouche said, seems eerily abandoned, with most people staying inside except to go to the supermarket. Larouche has been chatting with her university friends online, studying Chinese and watching movies to pass the time.

She said even if she does get to fly back to Canada, she doesn’t know how she would get to the airport. On a normal day it’s an hour away by subway or taxi. But both services — and all local transportation — have been shut down as the city deals with the public health crisis.

After days of fruitless phone calls and appeals to anyone who would listen, Lily Liu said Wednesday she was encouraged to learn that Canada was working to send in a plane to fly Canadians out of Wuhan.

Liu’s daughter, Fiona Dong, who got her master’s degree at the University of British Columbia and just started PhD studies at National Taiwan University, flew to Wuhan earlier in the month to visit her father and grandparents and to celebrate Lunar New Year. She had a ticket to fly out on Jan. 27, but the flight was cancelled when the city was locked down.

“I’ve never had this happen in my life,” Liu said. “This is my only daughter. I raised her as a single mother. I am so stressed — and desperate.”

So desperate, in fact, that Liu and her sister, an American citizen, even reached out to U.S. government officials to see if there was a way they could get Fiona a seat on a U.S. flight out of Wuhan.

“I sent a request to the American embassy (in China) ... Unfortunately, they didn’t take my daughter because we’re not American citizens.”

Within the last couple of days, her daughter finally got a call back from the Canadian embassy in Shanghai seeking to verify her information. Liu said the phone call gives her hope that Fiona will have a seat on the plane when the time comes.

Until then, Liu said she talks to her daughter daily — usually on WhatsApp. With infection numbers soaring each day, she said all she can do for her daughter is send words of encouragement.

“Only thing I can do is encourage them,” she said. “They can get through.”

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Fiona has basically hunkered down in her father’s home with little to do to pass the time, but that’s fine with her mother.

“Just stay at home, read … It’s the safest way,” Liu said.

That’s what Edward Wang, a Vancouver man in Wuhan to visit family, has been doing. He said he’s fortunate that his family has a detached home, with space enough to comfortably stay inside.

But he’s anxious to hear good news from the Canadian government.

“I just want to go back to Vancouver,” he said. “Being stranded in a foreign country with no one to turn to is a very frightening concept.”

With files from Alex Ballingall

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