Trace missing foreign-returned persons: Haryana chief secretary

A senior bureaucrat says there is a gap in the number of passengers who should have been monitored and the actual number

Haryana chief secretary Keshni Anand Arora on Friday directed state agencies to make all-out efforts to trace ‘foreign-returned persons’ of the state who are missing or untraceable.

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This direction assumes significance in the backdrop of Union cabinet secretary Rajiv Gauba asking the state governments to step up surveillance of international passengers who reached India before the government banned commercial flights from abroad.

Gauba, the country’s senior-most bureaucrat, said there was a gap in the number of passengers who should have been monitored and the actual number.

“This may seriously jeopardise our efforts to contain the spread of Covid-19, given that many of the people who have so far tested positive for Covid-19 so far in India have had a history of international travel,” the cabinet secretary said in a letter to all chief secretaries on Thursday.

On Friday, while presiding over the meeting of Crisis Coordination Committee here, the chief secretary said, “All-out efforts should be made to trace foreign-returned persons of the state who are missing or untraceable.”

She said those who are in quarantine must be contacted at the earliest to ensure that their health is being regularly monitored by health officials.

On Thursday, officials had said that the number of people who had returned from foreign countries in state was 10, 803. However, as the health department has been continuously chasing missing persons with a travel history to affected countries, the number was revised to 11,425 on Friday.

Additional chief secretary (ACS-health and family welfare) Rajeev Arora said tracing people who had returned from foreign countries and are living in Haryana was the ‘top-most priority’ of the health department.

“We have adopted different ways to trace passengers in question. People from across the state are also reaching out to us, giving information about foreign-returned persons living in the vicinity. People are informing me over phone about such individuals,” Arora said.

This proactive stance of people, the ACS health said, has also helped the health department in tracing people who had returned from foreign countries before the ban on international flights.

He said: “And that’s the reason why the figure regarding number of passengers returned from foreign countries is not static and has been increasing regularly.”

The challenge before the authorities is to trace people with foreign travel history who are currently not living at the address mentioned on their passports.