Already witnessing an uptick rise in COVID-19 cases, a cluster of infections was detected on Thursday in an international chartered flight coming from Italy at Amritsar airport. A total of 125 passengers on a Milan-Amritsar charter flight were found COVID-19 positive, when tested on arrival, said government officials on Thursday.
The development took place on the day the state reported 2427 new COVID-19 cases at the positivity rate of 10.20 percent along with five fatalities on Thursday. The total number of cases in the State went up to 6,11,102 with the death toll standing at 16,662.
The total number of active cases stood at 6,687 — witnessing a 51 percent jump from the previous day.
Officials said that there were a total of 179 passengers on the charter flight YU-661, which landed at the Amritsar airport at around 1.30 pm on Wednesday.
Since Italy is one of the “at risk” countries according to the Union Health Ministry, all eligible passengers — 160 in this case — were tested for COVID-19 and 125 of them were found to be positive, added the officials, adding that out of total 179 passengers, 19 were children or infants and that was why they were exempted from on-arrival RT-PCR testing.
The charter flight between Milan in Italy and Amritsar in Punjab was operated by Portuguese company EuroAtlantic Airways.
In the backdrop of rising cases of the highly infectious Omicron, the Union Health Ministry had, on December 25, sent multi-disciplinary teams and nodal officers to 10 states that were either reporting a surge or recording vaccination coverage below the national average. Punjab was among the 10 states.
In Punjab, the vaccination drive for the 15-18 age group has been hit by more than 16,000 paramedics going on strike, demanding pay hike and allowances
The staff on strike include 9,500 employees under National Health Mission (NHM), 2,500 multipurpose health workers (MPHW), 3,000 staff nurses on regular rolls and 1,200 rural pharmacists. The NHM staff include clerical cadres, auxiliary nursing midwives (ANMs), staff nurses, health workers and so on.