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MUMBAI: In serious violation of Covid’s social distancing rules, a couple of passengers who landed in Mumbai in the Vande Bharat Mission The repatriation flight from London in the early hours of Sunday, could meet his parents, family members who had gathered outside the Mumbai airport terminal building, according to a person who was at the airport to meet his family.
The meeting between London returnees and their Mumbai relatives was brief, as passengers were boarded on a bus and taken to their designated hotels for the mandatory 14-day quarantine. But the physical proximity that London passengers managed to have with their family members in Mumbai would have been enough to cause viral transmission, if those passengers had contracted the infection during or before the flight.
“Some parents were able to come into contact with their children who had returned from London. I saw a young woman, in her 20s and 22s, leaving the terminal building crying. A middle-aged man, probably her father, who had come To meet her, he approached her, put his hand on her shoulder to comfort her. She was probably excited because, although she is in Mumbai, she has to stay away from her family for another 14 days. After their brief meeting, she boarded the BEST bus to your designated hotel, “said Chandan Sondi, who had arrived at the airport to receive a relative. “The arrival level of Terminal 2 had a lot of police and security personnel. But I saw that some family members had short meetings with the arriving passengers. The good thing was that only a few family / friends had gathered outside the terminal to receive their passengers, probably due to the 14-day quarantine clause. But hotel staff, standing with banners for arriving passengers, some entering and leaving the terminal building, I don’t know how safe everything is that, “he said. additional.
Failure to comply with the rules for social distancing between passengers and their family members is cause for great concern, given that two passengers who arrived in Kerala on the flights of the Vande Bharat Mission in recent days have tested positive for Covid. Kerala, Prime Minister Pinarayi Vijayan He said the new cases are “a warning to those returning from abroad and for other states to be on alert.” He also said that it is necessary to strengthen “our mitigation efforts and preventive measures.” Mumbai already has more than 11,000 Covid cases, which has overwhelmed the city’s health infrastructure. This week, only 2,350 Indians stranded in countries like the United Kingdom, the United States, Singapore, Malaysia, Bangladeshand Philippines It is expected to land in Mumbai. “If passengers are allowed to meet their family members after leaving the terminal building and before going to the quarantine hotel, what is the point of the 14-day quarantine,” said an airline official. .
“The London-Mumbai flight landed around 1:45 am. But the first of the passengers left the terminal only after two hours,” Sondi said, implying that the rules for social distancing inside the terminal would have caused it. The Air India flight was packed with 329 passengers on board. There was no social distancing among the passengers on board the flights. However, after the passengers disembarked, a minimum of two meters was kept between the passengers through distinctive markings placed inside the terminal building. The temperature inspection of the passengers was carried out before they entered the immigration area and their checked baggage was disinfected before being loaded onto the conveyor belt. Passengers also received disinfected luggage carts. For now, passengers have been sent to paid quarantine facilities at their designated hotels. They will have to stay there for the next 14 days.
The next Vande Bharat Mission flight to Mumbai is from Singapore with 243 passengers on board. The flight is expected to land at 12.30pm and a flight. The third and last flight of the day is one from Manila with 241 passengers arriving at 11pm. In the following days, a total of ten flights and six transit flights are expected from countries such as the United Kingdom, the United States, Singapore, Malaysia, Bangladesh and the Philippines. The airport has developed a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) to comply with government guidelines on handling these passengers. But once passengers collect their bags, they are escorted by CISF and turned over to local police / state authorities who transport them to the hotel’s quarantine facilities.
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