Punjab amends guidelines for passengers arriving on domestic flights 4 times in 24 hours

“In less than 24 hours, we have had four sets of guidelines and what finally we adopt on the ground will be after solving a jig-saw puzzle,” a government official said.

Almost 24 hours after the CM spoke on Saturday, it was not clear till Sunday evening how the quarantine would be made operational for several travellers who would not want to be in the state for more than a day or a few hours.

First instructions by CS

The government then came up with the guidelines late Sunday evening, with Chief Secretary Karan Avtar Singh writing to DCs, with a rider that all those belonging to Punjab, who land at any of state’s six airports — Bathinda, Mohali, Amritsar, Ludhiana, Jalandhar and Pathankot, would be tested with RT-PCR kits and those testing positive will be sent for institutional quarantine and those testing negative would be sent home for quarantine.

This created confusion as nobody knew the fate of those travellers who are not bonafide residents of the state. The government authorities were not able to answer queries to this effect.

“Not that the residents of the other states, who land in Punjab, do not pose a Covid threat. But we do not know what to do with them,” a functionary in one of the five districts had stated.

CS revises order

In the morning on Monday, the government then asked the DCs to test randomly. This as there were apprehensions that testing so many passengers everyday would put pressure on the state resources.

When the DCs were yet to issue orders, Principal Secretary, Health, Anurag Aggarwal issued revised guidelines, claiming superiority on the earlier guidelines.

Health Secretary issues guidelines

The guidelines issued by Principal Secretary, Health stated that all domestic travellers entering Punjab who are found asymptomatic or test negative will have to remain under home quarantine for 14 days.

These said that international travellers, however, will have to compulsorily undergo institutional quarantine for at least seven days.

The revised guidelines said that international travellers, people entering Punjab through airport or seaport/or landport will have to hand in a self-declaration with their personal and health details to the state and will be screened at their entry.

The passengers found to be symptomatic during screening will be taken to a health facility for testing. If they test positive, they would be sent to Covid Care Centres. Asymptomatic passengers and those testing negative could be taken into paid institutional quarantine (government/hotel quarantine) on payment basis and will have to undergo test on the fifth day.

If they test negative, they can go home at the end of seven days but will be asked to home quarantine themselves and monitor their own health for another week. They will have to submit a written undertaking about this to health officials, these guidelines said.

Those who test positive will be taken to a government isolation facility. Only under exceptional circumstances such as pregnancy or death of an immediate family member or severe mental illness will a deputy commissioner allow them to quarantine themselves at home. The state health department must be informed of such cases, the guidelines added.

For domestic travellers the revised guidelines dropped the testing-all protocol and said they will be screened at the state’s entry points and only those found to have Covid-19 symptoms will be taken to a health facility for testing.

From there, those who test positive will be sent to a Covid Care Centres. Those found asymptomatic or testing negative will be allowed to go home after submitting an undertaking that they would quarantine themselves for 14 days.

These guidelines finally clarified that the frequent travellers would not need to quarantine. They were classified as interstate travellers, who need to travel out of Punjab, such as MP/MLA, salespersons, transporters, doctors, journalists, executives, engineers, traders, and consultants.

Deputy Commissioners and Sub-Divisional Magistrates were told to issue passes to such people after they undertake to self-monitor their health.

Fresh order by Health Department

After these consolidated guidelines, Special Secretary Health, Isha Kalia, in another order to DCs stated that only those domestic arrivals, who are symptomatic would be tested. Those asymptomatic would be sampled randomly.

The sampling would be done at the airports itself.

A functionary of the government said, “A senior official even directed the DCs to test those arriving in the state with Rapid Testing Kits. It was after the senior official was told that the use of RTKs was discontinued that the suggestion was junked.”

As guidelines kept changing, the district authorities tested all in the morning and after revised guidelines, they tested randomly. “Each sampling requires at least 10 minutes considering changing gloves, masks, taking samples and labelling boxes. The passengers were getting restless,” a district official said.

Meanwhile till the evening Monday, Amritsar airport bad received two flights from Jaipur and Delhi. While 16 passengers arrived from Jaipur, 25 arrived from Delhi.

Two flights departed from Amritsar, the flight for Patha carried 39 passengers and as many as 31 boarded the flight to Delhi. Two flights were cancelled to and fro Mumbai for operational reasons.

(With inputs from ENS, Amritsar)