A senior health official from Punjab, requesting anonymity, said there was a clear lapse, as the man had managed to travel despite testing positive. A day after the state government put in new rules for travellers coming in from the United Kingdom, Europe and the Middle East, 591 passengers from the UK landed at Mumbai International Airport between Monday and Tuesday afternoon and none were found to be symptomatic.
“Institutional quarantine is mandatory for all passengers. Only symptomatic passengers will be shifted to the hospital. No such case has come forward today,” said Additional Municipal Commissioner P Velrasu.
According to guidelines issued by the BMC on Monday, instead of undergoing a test at the airport, asymptomatic passengers will have to undergo RT-PCR test between the fifth and seventh day of institutional quarantine at the hotel at their own cost. Passengers with a negative test report will be discharged to observe mandatory home quarantine for seven days. Symptomatic passengers will be moved to Seven Hills hospital in Andheri.
Officials said three flights from the UK arrived till 4 pm on Tuesday. Out of 591 passengers, 299 were moved to city hotels as they were asymptomatic and around 236 passengers were from out of the state, they added.
“Passengers from outside Maharashtra with connecting flights and those planning to travel by road to their homes out of the state were allowed to go to their destinations. Information is sent to their state representative about their travel,” read a statement by the BMC. Out of 591 flyers, 187 were city residents, the statement added.
The state government has made institutional quarantine mandatory for travellers from UK, European and Middle Eastern countries. “People who reside out of the state and have a negative RT-PCR report, which is not more than 72 hours’ old, were allowed to travel to their respective cities. And we are also sending emails to respective state representatives that these passengers have travelled from the UK,” Velrasu said.
On Monday, India suspended all flights from and to the UK till December 31 amid concerns of a new variant of SARS-CoV-2 that is “spreading and growing rapidly” over there. “Yesterday, Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport (CSMIA) had four flights, one from Amsterdam and three from London, carrying over 690 passengers. Today, December 22, no flight is operating to and from London. Five flights are arriving and eight departing to Dubai and one departing for Doha,” the airport operator stated in a press release.
The BMC, in a circular on Monday, said it had decided to conduct institutional quarantine for all passengers from all over Europe and the Middle East for seven days after landing at the airport, as well as home quarantine for passengers from other countries.
