The Andhra Pradesh government is on high alert following the laboratory reports which confirmed that the woman aged 47 years who had escaped health authorities at Delhi airport while returning from the UK in the last week was carrying the mutated strain of the coronavirus at present raging in Britain.

Pune’s civic body, isstill tracing 109 travellers who had arrived from the UK in the last 15 days in the city. Owing to absence of their contact details and unsuccessful attempts to connect via the phone, the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) has to take the police for help.

Odisha is also facing the same problems. A list of 74 people who had travelled from the UK in Odisha was given by the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation. They have formed six teams for tracing them but it is getting difficult as the returnees’ phones that are powered by UK-based service providers are switched off.

K Bhaskar, who is a health and family welfare commissioner of AP said that his department had traced 1,406 UK returnees from the identified 1,423 contacts. They have also identified 6,364 contacts.

PMC officials said few travellers had landed in Mumbai and by road came to Pune. PMC’s contact-tracing team has tried to reach them but they are untraceable. Asper the PMC protocol, all passengers who had arrived from West Asian and European countries had to undergo mandatory institutional quarantine at their own expense in nearby hotels in the city for at least 7 days.

In AP, the woman who was found, is a native of Rajahmundry. She had boarded a Visakhapatnam-bound special train from New Delhi on 22nd December after being tested positive. She had switched off her mobile phone that made it difficult to trace her. But later she was traced and quarantined. Officials have filed a police complaint against her for breaking the protocol. The woman reached Rajahmundry in the early hours of 24th December. Her son had received her at Delhi airport and also accompanied her on the train journey was tested negative. Officials are hoping that the lady might have not come in contact with many people during her 1,800-km train journey. Both mother and son are kept at the Rajahmundry government hospital in separate isolation rooms.

Source: ET Healthworld