Punjab Government is making concentrated efforts to trace more than 60,000 Non-Resident Indians or foreign returnees who have landed in the State over the past few days. For the same, the Government has initiated the continuous monitoring to keep a close watch on any new entrants.
“Over 94,000 NRIs and foreign returned persons, who had entered the State in recent days. Most have been tracked and around 30,000 had been placed under isolation. But, all-out efforts are being made to trace the remaining,” said the Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh on Tuesday.
He said that it was imperative to maintain distance, and also to trace and test all those who had returned from corona-affected countries. “The constant monitoring is in progress to keep check on any new entrants,” he said.
Notably, the state Health Minister Balbir Singh Sidhu, a day before, wrote in a letter to his Union Ministry counterpart Harsh Vardhan that as many 90,000 NRIs entered Punjab in the month of March.
In the letter, Sidhu had requested Vardhan for “additional funds of minimum Rs 150 crores from Government of India” to battle the COVID pandemic.
“Punjab has maximum number of NRIs in the country and this month only, 90,000 of them have landed in the State,” Sidhu had written adding that “many of them have symptoms of COVID-19 and are further spreading the disease through their contact or transmission”.
The curious case of 70-year-old Baldev Singh, who was India’s fourth COVID casualty, is well know, who has, till date, infected at least 20 others after he returned from Germany via Italy — laying bare the loopholes in screening and quarantine measures at airports or various stages.