Around 700 UK returnees on district admin radar

At least 695 travellers who arrived in Gurugram from the United Kingdom between November 25 and December 23, as per the list shared by the Bureau of Immigration,

At least 695 travellers who arrived in Gurugram from the United Kingdom between November 25 and December 23, as per the list shared by the Bureau of Immigration, will be monitored by the district health department to identify if any of them have been infected with a new strain of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which is more transmissible.

HT Image

According to the health official, the state health department on Thursday night received a comprehensive list of 695 travellers who arrived in Gurugram from the UK in the last four weeks. Of these, at least 438 travellers — including 113 travellers as reported by HT on Thursday — arrived after December 9 and over 257 people arrived between November 25 and December 8.

“Following the standard operating procedure (SOP) issued by the union ministry of health and family welfare, our teams have started following up with the people having recent travel history to the UK,” said Dr Virender Yadav, chief medical officer.

“Some might have completed their 14 days of the infection cycle. Teams will be contacting them to self-monitor themselves for symptoms like fever, cough, cold and difficulty in breathing,” said Yadav. According to him, they will be followed up through calls or visits by the rapid response teams.

People testing positive will be isolated at an institutional facility set up at a PG in Sector 22. “It will be the designated facility for travellers who test positive. They will have to stay at the facility until their genome sequence results are declared,” said the chief medical officer, adding that state government will issue further directives for the surveillance of UK returnees.

As per the guideline, if the gene sequencing remains consistent with the current SARS-CoV-2 genome circulating, then the positive patient can be allowed home isolation. But if the genomic sequencing indicates the presence of a new SARS-CoV-2 variant, then the patient will continue to remain in a separate isolation unit. The person will be tested on the 14th day of infection. In case sample tests positive, isolation will continue until two consecutive samples taken within 24 hours test negative.