Kumbh pilgrims told to isolate for 14 days on return
An official said it will be nearly impossible for them to track travellers, unless pilgrims declare their details on the govt portal
The Delhi Disaster Management Authority (DDMA) on Saturday asked those returning from the Kumbh Mela at Haridwar and those who intend to go there in the coming days to mandatorily upload their details on the Delhi government website and undergo 14-day home or institutional quarantine after returning to the Capital.
In an order issued later by chief secretary Vijay Dev on Saturday night, the DDMA also asked Delhi residents, who had visited the ongoing Kumbh Mela between April 4 and Saturday, to upload their details compulsorily by Sunday midnight. The details include name of the returnee, address in Delhi, contact number, ID proof, date of departure from Delhi and arrival in Delhi, among others.
“All those residents of Delhi, who have visited or are going to visit Kumbh, will be required to compulsory home quarantine themselves for 14 days on arrival to Delhi. If it is found/reported that any such resident of Delhi, who has returned to Delhi after visiting Kumbh, has not uploaded the requisite details/information, he/she will be sent to an institutional government quarantine centre for 14 days by the district magistrate (DM) concerned,” read the order.
At least 2,000 devotees have tested Covid-19 positive at Kumbh in around a week’s time.
The Delhi government has no data on the number of residents who went to attend the Kumbh Mela this year, senior government officials said.
“It is true that such a portal should have been created earlier, preferably before the Kumbh Mela started on March 11 or from April 1 when the cases started rising in Delhi. We hope all such people will now fill in their details at the earliest so that districts can launch surveillance on them. On March 17, when the Kumbh had started, DDMA had issued a general advisory urging people to monitor their health and do an RT-PCR test upon their return to Delhi. The advisory, however, did not say that it was mandatory for the returnees,” said an official on condition of anonymity.
Dr Lalit Kant, former head of the department of epidemiology at the Indian Council of Medical Research, however, said the damage has already been done. “Weeks have passed since day one of the Maha Kumbh and thousands must have already returned to Delhi. Those who visited in the first few days would have finished their quarantine by now had this been planned before. Now, people who returned in the past 14 days will have to be traced and tracked and there is no guarantee that everyone who went there will actually fill the forms. All of the returnees are moving freely, some of who may even have Covid-19,” he said.
A revenue official in one of the 11 districts said it will be nearly impossible for the administration to identify or locate those who returned from the Kumbh, without the pilgrims themselves declaring their details on the government portal. “There are chances that we can track those Delhi visitors who registered in the Uttarakhand government portal. But, it is unlikely many did that,” said the revenue official on condition of anonymity.
The order further asked all DMs to ensure all such residents are traced and kept under surveillance on a daily basis.