New Covid strain: UP trying to trace UK returnees amid switched-off phone hurdle

By Express News Service

LUCKNOW: UP Health officials are finding it difficult to connect to those who have recently returned from the UK as many of them have switched off their mobile phones.

Earlier, CM Yogi Adityanath had issued a directive to screen passengers who had come to the state from abroad between November 25 and December 8. However, later the orders were issued to conduct compulsory RT PCR tests of all those who had come to the state after December 9.

Notably, India has suspended passenger flights to and from the UK from Wednesday till December 31 or till further orders in the wake of the emergence of the mutated strain of the virus.

The centre had also alerted the states and asked them to ensure that all those who have come from the UK should undergo strict screening coupled with RT-PCR test to ascertain their covid status.

However, treading cautiously, UP government has asked the state health department to list the passengers coming not only from the UK but entire Europe after December 9.

The state government has issued directives to authorities concerned to screen the passengers from the UK and other European countries through RT-PCR test and keep them under surveillance under home quarantine for 10 days even if they test negative for the coronavirus.

In case anyone is found COVID-19 positive, he/she would be kept in isolation in a separate unit of an institutional facility.

According to Lucknow Chief Medical Officer (CMO) Dr Sanjay Bhatnagar, the Central government had already provided a list of those returning from the UK to Uttar Pradesh. Around four dozen such passengers figured on the list. They had arrived in the state from the UK since November 24. However, the list only mentions their name and phone number.

Sources in the health department claimed that efforts were on to contact the passengers but the majority have switched off their phones. “A number of them have been traced and efforts are on to get in touch with others,” the CMO said.

Meanwhile, the state health department had sounded an alert in all the states. “Phone calls to most of the mobile numbers are either not being received or are switched off,” said a senior official.

“We have to remain alert keeping in mind the new strain of coronavirus. All those who came to the state from abroad between November 25 and December 8 should be tested and compulsory RT-PCR test should be done for those coming after December 9,” the chief minister was quoted as saying in a statement.