Despite the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare issuing detailed standard operating procedures (SOPs) with regard to travellers from the United Kingdom, two passengers who tested positive on arrival from London at the IGI Airport in Delhi went missing from isolation centres and reached their hometowns in Andhra Pradesh and Punjab.
According to reports, five passengers went missing after landing from the UK, but three of them were traced by Tuesday night and admitted to Lok Nayak Hospital in the national Capital.
According to officials, a 46-year-old woman, teacher by profession, arrived on Monday and tested positive for Covid in a Rapid Antigen Test at the Delhi airport. Her 22-year-old son tested negative. She was handed over to the Safdarjung Hospital. However, she fled from the hospital and reached Rajahmundry via the AP Special Express in the wee hours on Thursday.
Meanwhile, the process to bring back the passenger has started. Railway police and health officials took her straight from the railway station to the hospital.
In the second case, a man who recently flew down from the UK and tested Covid-19 positive escaped from an isolation centre in Delhi and reached Ludhiana where he checked himself into a private hospital. He is from Amritsar’s Pandori village. He was sent back to Safdarjung Hospital on Wednesday night.
When asked, Delhi Health Minister Satyendar Jain on Thursday said the State Government will speak to airport authorities.
Amid mounting concern over a new strain of the virus detected in the UK, the Delhi Government on Tuesday had said people who have arrived here recently from that country, are being traced and tested, while an institutional quarantine facility was being set up separately for positive cases at the LNJP Hospital.
All the passengers travelling from or transiting through airports in the UK and disembarking in India would be subjected to RT-PCR test on arrival. In the case of a positive sample, the SOP recommended spike gene-based RT-PCR test. Passengers testing positive will be isolated in an institutional isolation facility in a separate (isolation) unit, coordinated by the respective State health authorities.
Necessary action to send the samples to the National Institute of Virology, Pune, or any other appropriate lab for genomic sequencing will be initiated at the facility level. If the genomic sequencing indicates the presence of the new variant of SARS-CoV 2 then the patient will be kept in the separate isolation unit and treated as per the clinical protocol.