The State health department will be conducting a special survey of passengers who arrived in Maharashtra from United Kingdom between November 25 and December 23. This move comes in wake of a new variant of coronavirus detected in that country.
Health Minister Rajesh Tope said, “The survey will be conducted as per Central government guidelines. We have a list of all passengers during this period which will be sent to all district and municipal corporation.”
The concerned authorities will conduct RT-PCR test on them and samples of those testing positive will be sent to National Institute of Virology, Pune, to check for traces of the new strain.
Relatives of the patients will also be put under institutional quarantine and will have to undergo RT-PCR tests between fifth to tenth day of the visitors being found positive. There will be follow up on those who test negative for 28 days.
The department has also appealed to flyers from U.K. to voluntarily come forward for testing. The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) too has issued a similar appeal.
Meanwhile, 1,688 passengers arrived at the Mumbai international airport from U.K. and other countries since Monday midnight and 745 of them were quarantined in the city, according to a civic official.
BMC teams at the airport are exempting from quarantine some categories of passengers such as pregnant women or those travelling to attend last rites of their kin, the official said. So far two passengers have been exempted.
(With PTI inputs)
