Punjab / 13 COVID-19 +ve passengers of Italy-Amritsar flight escape from hospital

Amritsar: A majority of passengers, 125 out of 179, who flew in on a chartered flight from Rome to Amritsar on Thursday tested positive for Covid-19, after which authorities struggled to quarantine them as required by rules before they eventually left the centres to which they were taken.

The district collector of Amritsar took a strong note of the incident, setting a deadline of Friday morning for them to return to the quarantine centre.

The passengers were taken to quarantine centres at their respective home districts and all of them had left by late evening. There were 179 passengers on the aircraft that landed in Amritsar at 11:20 am, officials said, adding that the aircraft had made a fuelling stop in Tbilisi, Georgia.

Amritsar airport director VK Seth said the flight was operated by SARC company. “On arrival at 11.20 am, their rapid test was conducted by a private agency hired through tendering”, Seth added.

Of the 179 passengers on board, 19 were children under the age of 5 years. According to government mandate, children under 5 years of age are exempt from RT-PCR testing on arrival. Since the flight was from Italy, a country defined as “at-risk”, 160 passengers underwent the test and 125 tested positive.

Most of the passengers are from various parts of Punjab. After they tested positive, they started protesting inside the terminal saying they are fully vaccinated and had undergone an RT-PCR test before departing Italy, which were negative.

Passenger Jasvir Singh Uppal, who belongs to Beas Pind in Jalandhar district and works in Italy, said, “Almost all of us are fully vaccinated and passengers conducted their RT-PCR tests from different reputed labs in Italy and tested negative. Our reports are on the internet and anyone in the world can check them. I surprised when my report turned negative at Amritsar airport. So, we lodged our protest and refused to go to quarantine centre”.

Seth said, “We have asked the lab which conducted the test and it stands by the result of the report of the test they have conducted”.

It was not clear whether the tests were faulty or the results obtained by the passengers were suspect. It is unlikely that all of the 125 passengers developed enough viral load to test positive in the time between their two tests as a matter of sheer coincidence.

Among the passengers who skipped quarantine first were 13 taken to the Guru Nanak Hospital in Amritsar.

District collector Gurpreet Singh Khaira took serious note of the incident and issued orders to the additional deputy commissioner to get police to book the passengers who left under the Epidemic act and the disaster management act.

In a statement, Khaira asked the passengers to get admitted into the quarantine centre till Friday morning failing which, they would face police action.

“Also, recommendation of cancellation of the passport and other records will be sent to the Home Department if they don’t turn up,” Khaira said.