Ukraine’s effort to quarantine more than 70 people evacuated from China over the new virus outbreak was plunged into chaos on Thursday as local residents hurled stones at buses carrying the evacuees and engaged in violent clashes with police.

The vehicles were finally able to reach the designated place of quarantine after hours of clashes. The masked evacuees, exhausted by the long journey, peeked through shattered bus windows as they drove slowly under heavy police escort.

Since the early morning, several hundred residents of the village of Novi Sanzhary in Ukraine’s central Poltava region had barricaded the road to a sanitarium intended to host the evacuees, fearing that they could become infected.

Quick Guide What are coronavirus symptoms and should I go to a doctor? Show What is Covid-19? Covid-19 is caused by a member of the coronavirus family that has never been encountered before. Like other coronaviruses, it has come from animals. The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared it a pandemic. What are the symptoms this coronavirus causes? According to the WHO, the most common symptoms of Covid-19 are fever, tiredness and a dry cough. Some patients may also have a runny nose, sore throat, nasal congestion and aches and pains or diarrhoea. Some people report losing their sense of taste and/or smell. About 80% of people who get Covid-19 experience a mild case – about as serious as a regular cold – and recover without needing any special treatment. About one in six people, the WHO says, become seriously ill. The elderly and people with underlying medical problems like high blood pressure, heart problems or diabetes, or chronic respiratory conditions, are at a greater risk of serious illness from Covid-19. In the UK, the National health Service (NHS) has identified the specific symptoms to look for as experiencing either: a high temperature - you feel hot to touch on your chest or back

a new continuous cough - this means you’ve started coughing repeatedly As this is viral pneumonia, antibiotics are of no use. The antiviral drugs we have against flu will not work, and there is currently no vaccine. Recovery depends on the strength of the immune system. Should I go to the doctor if I have a cough? Medical advice varies around the world - with many countries imposing travel bans and lockdowns to try and prevent the spread of the virus. In many place people are being told to stay at home rather than visit a doctor of hospital in person. Check with your local authorities. In the UK, NHS advice is that anyone with symptoms should stay at home for at least 7 days. If you live with other people, they should stay at home for at least 14 days, to avoid spreading the infection outside the home.

Demonstrators, some of whom appeared drunk, put up road blocks, burned tyres and clashed with hundreds of riot police who moved to restore access. One protester tried to ram police lines with his car.

The Ukrainian authorities say all passengers on board had been screened twice for the virus before being allowed to fly, but that was not enough to pacify the protesters.

“Isn’t there any other place in Ukraine that can host 50 people, that is located in more or less remote villages or in far-off areas where there is no threat to population?” queried resident Yuriy Dzyubenko.

One protester was heard suggesting they should be kept at Chernobyl, the site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster in 1986. Another suggested taking them to parliament, while another said Zelenskiy, Ukraine’s president, should house them himself if he really believed there was no danger.

“This is what I am telling him, telling the president: ‘Take 10 people, then I will take two,’” a man called Yuriy, who did not give his last name, said.

Nine police and one civilian were hospitalised, regional police said in a statement.

More than 10 protesters were detained, and Ukraine’s interior minister, Arsen Avakov, visited the site of the skirmishes to try to calm the crowd down. He urged the protesters “not to fall for provocations and be understanding of the necessity for these temporary measures”.

“The situation is rather heated,” Poltava’s regional police spokesman Yuri Sulayev said.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy also weighed in, saying the protests showed “not the best side of our character”. In a statement on his Facebook page, Zelenskiy said the authorities had done everything possible to make sure the virus would not spread to Ukraine.

“But there is another danger that I would like to mention. The danger of forgetting that we are all human and we are all Ukrainian,” he said.

Municipal legislators in the village vowed to continue opposing the evacuation, saying that the sanitarium’s sewage system was linked to the one in the village and ends up in a nearby waste facility.

“We can’t allow putting the health and life of local residents at risk, and demand that top officials take urgent moves to prevent people from China from being put here,” they said in a statement.

Amid the clashes between local residents and police, Ukraine’s prime minister, Oleksiy Honcharuk, said he would immediately fly to the site to oversee matters personally.

A plane with 45 Ukrainians and 27 foreign nationals took off from Wuhan early on Thursday, the origin of the outbreak that has infected more than 75,000 people worldwide and killed over 2,100.

Those evacuated included nationals from Belarus, Kazakhstan, Argentina, Ecuador, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic and Panama.