The cup of woes seems to be overflowing for the foreign returnees, who, after a series of struggles on the foreign soil, reached their motherland with a lot of hope. While many are enjoying the stay ‘thrust upon them’ in the garb of compulsory quarantine, some are forced to take isolation after having tested positive for COVID-19.
When Air India’s Kuwait – Tirupati flight made a touchdown at the Renigunta airport last week, many expected it to become a smooth affair, but it didn’t turn out that way. The 149 passengers in the aircraft, hailing mostly from the Rayalaseema region, reached Tirupati past midnight, nearly two hours behind schedule, when they were made to undergo the exercise in the form of fever testing and downloading of ‘Arogya Setu’ application on their mobile phones equipped with new SIM cards. The passenger baggages were handed over to them after they were specially disinfected by the sanitary staff of the Airports Authority of India (AAI).
Reached various districts
One hundred and sixteen passengers went to Kadapa by four RTC buses, while another bus bound for Visakhapatnam had 22 passengers, six each alighting in East Godavari and Nellore, five in West Godavari, four in Vizag and one in Krishna district. Free quarantine was provided at the Vikruthamala housing colony while the AP Tourism arranged paid quarantine in some tie-up hotels. Twenty persons, including passengers from Chittoor, Kurnool, Ananthapur and Chennai were housed in these hotels.
Things appeared to go smooth till the 20 quarantined passengers were made to undergo the mandatory swab testing after they checked into the local hotels. To one’s shock, five of them tested positive, including four local residents accommodated in an inn and one, a patient with co-morbid conditions, who stayed separately. The seemingly asymptomatic cases apparently passed through the thermal scanning at the airport and only tested positive in the swab test.
Monitoring
"The cases were immediately shifted to the isolation ward in the Ruia hospital. The remaining 15, after the institutional quarantine for seven days, will have to undergo home quarantine for seven more days," Special Deputy Collector N. Rajasekhar, who is in charge of quarantining the incoming flight and train passengers, told The Hindu .
The details of the other passengers on the flight will be shared with the respective district officials, who will monitor their adherence to home quarantine norms.
The incident has sent chill down the spine of all the passengers who arrived by that flight. Many of them are also worried about their own COVID status, but are scared to reveal the same for fear of not only social stigma, but also the likely pressure from government machinery to undergo isolation.
