Covid: Maharashtra tweaks quarantine rules for fliers on new strain watchlist

Maharashtra continued to control its daily caseload as it has not crossed 5,000 for the past 20 days. A total of 98,503 cases have been reported in December, against the 109,166 during November 1-24.

Keeping in line with the trend of daily Covid-19 caseload below 4,000 over the past few days, Maharashtra recorded 3,580 cases on Thursday, taking the tally to 1,909,951. The death toll breached the 49,000 mark after 89 new casualties.

Prstik Chorge/HT

The state government also tweaked its earlier order of mandatory quarantine of 14 days for travellers from Europe, Middle East and South Africa, bringing the period down to seven days, if they tested negative between the fifth and seventh day. The patients will have to complete the remaining quarantine period at home, the notification by chief secretary Sanjay Kumar stated.

Earlier, on December 21, the state government had made 14-day institutional quarantine mandatory for passengers arriving from these countries in the wake of the emergence of a new fast spreading variant of the virus in the United Kingdom (UK) and other countries. The revised notification issued on Thursday has brought down the period to seven days, although hospitalisation for Covid-19-positive passengers remains intact.

“On arrival, no RT-PCR test will be conducted for asymptomatic passengers who will be taken to a paid institutional quarantine facility [hotel]. They will be sent home if the test between 5th to 7th day results in a negative, although the remaining period of quarantine will have to be completed at home. Asymptomatic Covid-19 patients with will continue to be institutionally quarantine for 14 days,” the order stated.

Meanwhile, Maharashtra continued to control its daily caseload as it has not crossed 5,000 for the past 20 days. A total of 98,503 cases have been reported in December, against the 109,166 during November 1-24.

But experts still want people and authorities to be extra cautious for two reasons — first, the concern of a surge from next month and second, a new variant of Covid-19 found in the UK, which is believed to be 70% more transmissible than the original strain.

They have also clarified that there is no need to revise our treatment protocol as of now, as the new variant is more infectious but it is yet to be proven that it is more harmful, said Dr Rahul Pandit, member of the state-appointed task force for the clinical management of critical patients.

“We don’t know its virulence yet. All we know is it is more infectious, means it spreads faster than the older strains. We also came to know that it has affected more people from the age group of 30 to 60 years, but this also could be a coincidence because that population is still out the most. I personally don’t think we can correlate this with the new variant,” said Dr Pandit, who is also director, critical care, Fortis Hospital, Mulund.

He also said that they don’t need to revise the treatment protocol at this moment. “We may need to revise our testing protocol, because we have come to know that patients are testing positive early after exposure to the virus, compared to the previous version. At present, patients are coming positive after getting tested between 5th and 7th day, but the new variant probably is coming a bit early and a patient can test positive between 3rd and 4th day. However, this also needs to be confirmed through extensive research. We will be changing the testing protocol only after getting confirmed information,” he said.

He also suggested to be cautious till the end of winter, especially in the backdrop of the emergence of the new variant.

Mumbai clocked 643 cases, taking the count to 289,204, and 12 deaths, taking the toll to 11,045. Pune city recorded 299 cases, pushing the tally to 189,338. Nagpur city stands third after Mumbai and Pune in terms of daily caseload with 237 new cases.

The state has completed 12,341,204 Covid tests with 62,728 tests conducted on Thursday. The overall positivity rate of the state stood at 15.48%. The number of recovered patients reached 1,804,871 with 3,171 recorded in the past 24 hours. The recovery rate remains at 94.5%.

Meanwhile, a day after the announcement of allowing amusement parks and tourist places to open, the state tourism department issued standard operating procedures (SOPs), stressing for physical distancing by keeping the number of visitors low during rides as well as regular sanitising of premises to combat the Covid-19 virus.

In case of amusement parks, the SOPs pointed that “staggering of visitors for different rides to be done, to allow for adequate physical distancing. Use of escalators with one person on alternate steps may be encouraged.”

For tourist places, the tourism department has asked the staff to take adequate care to ensure the safety of themselves as well as the visitors. “Social-distancing includes refraining from hugging, shaking hands with travellers as well as among staff. It involves maintaining distance and avoiding anyone who is coughing or sneezing,” said the SOP.

Amusement owners said these new guidelines will increase the overall running costs, making it an unviable proposition. “We spend at least ₹30 lakh to run our place, which will now increase due to these SOPs. However, in this pandemic, when people are avoiding going out, we will hardly get any visitors, it makes no business sense to open the place,” said Rajesh Vardhan, managing director, Vardhman Fantasy, who has an amusement park in Mira Road.