The student was studying at Wuhan University, has been kept under observation, in Kerala.

Update: Information on the patient from the media briefing.

India has reported its first confirmed case of a novel coronavirus in Kerala, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare confirmed. The patient is a student from Kerala, who had returned from Wuhan and was studying at Wuhan University in China. Wuhan is the epicentre of the virus and it spread from a wet market that was selling illegal wildlife, which has now been shut down.

The patient is reported to be in a stable condition, isolated and is being monitored closely.

"One positive case of Novel Coronavirus patient, of a student studying in Wuhan University, has been reported in Kerala," the Health Minister was quoted as said by NDTV.

The Kerala Health Minister K.K. Shailaja had called for a media briefing at 3 pm.

She said, "Out of the 20 samples that we had sent for testing 10 returned as negative, 6 were suspected, out of them one came out as positive" and that the government "will conduct a meeting with health experts to ensure that there is no spread."

"We have set up an isolation ward in Thrissur Medical Hospital. The condition of the boy is not serious, he is being taken care of," said Shailaja, whose main concern are the cases coming in from Wuhan.

Shailaja said that control rooms have been opened and rapid response teams have been activated. All hospitals will monitor patients coming with similar symptoms and the health department will isolate patients who are showing symptoms of the virus and start their treatment, reported ANI.

In Kerala, one person each from Thrissur, Thiruvananthapuram, Pathanamthitta and Malappuram and three from Ernakulam district have been kept in isolation wards of various health centres, PTI reported. As a precautionary measure, health authorities in India have already placed many people under medical watch. Various airports in the country have started screening passengers arriving from China for symptoms of coronavirus infection.

According to the Kerala Health Ministry, 800 people have been kept under observation in the state. While most of them are quarantined at home, seven people were kept under observation in isolation wards at different hospitals, PTI reported.

India has issued travel warnings to travellers going to China in light of the spread of the virus. The government and the embassy in Beijing are working to get the Indians, stuck in China's lockdown, back to the country. China, in order to stop the spread, has placed travel bans on 16 cities with around 50 million people in it.

What is Coronavirus?

A novel coronavirus (CoV), or a new coronavirus, is one that hasn't been previously identified. The 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV, in short) is a respiratory virus that was first discovered in Wuhan, a city in China's Hubei Province in December 2019. It is a large family of viruses of which only six can infect humans. The 2019-nCoV is one of them, and so are the SARS and MERS viruses. While there is no confirmation on the origin of the virus, it is suspect that the first human victim(s) was infected by a snake, at the Wuhan market.

The virus, till date, has claimed the lives of around 170 people in China and around 7,711 people are infected. It has spread to many Asian countries – Hong Kong, Thailand, Macau, Singapore, Taiwan, Japan, Malaysia, South Korea, Vietnam and Cambodia as well as France, Australia, US, Canada, Germany, Ivory Coast, Nepal and Sri Lanka. However, there have been no fatalities in any of these countries.

With inputs from agencies