By Raju Vernekar
Mumbai, Dec 3:
Five more persons, who arrived in Mumbai from ‘at risk countries’ tested positive for COVID-19 infection, taking the number of Nine travellers from ‘at risk’ countries, tested positive to 09, amid concerns over the new Omicron variant of the virus, on Thursday.
In all 2868 migrants from 40 countries, including South Africa landed in Mumbai and a test of 485 passengers was carried out, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) officials said.
Additional Municipal Commissioner Suresh Kakani said the number of such travellers who have tested positive on arrival in the city and who are suspected to have been infected with the Omicron variant, increased to nine.
The BMC officials said that all the five travellers are male, who had arrived in the city between November 17 and December 02. Three of them had arrived from London, one from Portugal and the 5 th one from Germany. Four travellers had tested positive earlier.
As per BMC officials they have carried out Covid-19 tests on a total of 485 travellers so far. All the positive travellers have been admitted to Seven Hills Hospital located at Andheri East in North West Mumbai and their samples have been sent for genome sequencing.
Similarly two passengers were tested corona positive in neighbouring Karnataka state. After this the BMC has become more alert. Now all the passengers will be made to undergo RT-PCR that checks for the “S” gene.
In another development the RTPCR test of 861 international passengers were carried out at the Mumbai International Airport on Thursday. Some of them tested positive for RTPCR. It was revealed that two passengers from South Africa were infected with Omicron. So far 28 reports have been sent for genetic testing. Besides 12 samples were sent to NIV and 16 samples were sent to Kasturba Hospital laboratory.
Mumbai Mayor Kishori Pednekar who visited the Mumbai International airport on Thursday said that the rules will be followed at the Mumbai airport as per the regulations of the state government on behalf of the BMC. There are 3 high risk countries as per state government regulations. People coming from there will be subjected to corona testing and genome sequencing. Certificate of completion of vaccination will be required for those arriving by domestic flight. Pednekar said
In the meanwhile, the Maharashtra government on Thursday revised the order released on November 30, 2021 about the international passengers coming to Mumbai amid the Omicron variant spread. It stated that passengers arriving from ‘ultra-risk’ countries will be de-boarded on priority and their checking and verification will be done on separate counters.
Passengers found to have visited South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Lesotho, Zimbabwe and Eswatini in the last 15 days, will be sent for mandatory Institutional quarantine for 7 days.
An RT PCR will be conducted for the arriving passengers on the day of arrival. The passengers found to be symptomatic at the time of arrival will also be sent for institutional quarantine.
The government has requested the Deputy Commissioner of Police (Immigration) and Foreigners Regional Registration Office (FRRO), Mumbai to draft a proforma of all passengers, declaring details regarding the countries visited in the last 15 days. The information shared by the passengers will be cross-checked by airport authorities, and any passenger found to have shared incorrect information will face consequences, the government order stated.
The government has urged the Mumbai International Airport Limited Authority (MAIL) to implement the protocol and share the notice with all airlines immediately. The government report hinted that the new variant of Covid-19 reported from South Africa is a Variant of Concern(VoC) as suggested by the WHO. Hence, rigorous implementation of disease surveillance is needed to curb the spread of the newly detected virus variant.
