The district administration is making arrangements for the next phase of returnees to Udupi district in June.
G. Jagadeesha, Deputy Commissioner, told The Hindu that 6,739 natives of Udupi district working in other States had applied for coming back. At least one other person was expected to accompany the applicants. Hence, the administration was expecting about 13,500 persons. “But, we will request the State government to allow the returnees to come in batches of 300 persons. This is because we have capacity only to test about 300 persons a day,” he said.
So far, 8,010 persons had returned from other States to the district and were kept in quarantine centres. Nearly half of them has been tested for COVID-19 and later allowed to return to their homes. Testing was slow due to the burden of large number of swabs at the labs, Mr. Jagadeesha said.
In order to ramp up testing, a COVID-19 testing lab would come up at the district government hospital here in three weeks. The lab would test about 250 samples a day. “In addition, we can take help of the lab started at Kasturba Medical College in Manipal recently. So far, about 700 swabs have been tested there,” he said.
As per the latest guidelines, the returnees would have to be in institutional quarantine for a week. After they are tested, they have to be under home quarantine for a week, he said.
The administration did not have figures of people returning from the Middle East. “We get the figures from the government after the flights are booked from those places,” Mr. Jagadeesha said.
