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ERNAKULAM :
Two Air India flights with 359 expatriates stranded in the covid-19 pandemic in the Gulf region landed at Kerala Cochin International Airport in the Ernakulam district and Calicut International Airport in the Malappuram district on Thursday night, starting what is considered the largest repatriation exercise that India has ever undertaken and codenamed ‘Vande Bharat’.
The first flight from Abu Dhabi landed at Cochin airport at 10:08 pm, with 181 passengers, including 49 pregnant women and four children. The second flight from Dubai arrived in Karipur around 10:30 p.m., with 182 passengers, including 19 pregnant women, five babies, 51 people with various diseases and six people in wheelchairs.
None of them have shown symptoms of covid-19 so far and are being transferred to quarantine facilities in their home districts, according to airport officials. They are all required to be in institutional quarantine for a week, accepting pregnant women and children who are allowed to go home, they said.
Kerala has implemented nearly 300,000 quarantine beds, ultraviolet tunnels at airports, measures to disinfect passengers’ luggage as part of preparations to receive those returning home amid the pandemic, state officials said.
The passengers received personal protective equipment such as masks and gloves, said the additional secretary of the Indian Foreign Ministry, Vikram Doraiswami, who is in charge of coordinating with Kerala.
The measures aim to ensure that Kerala is not hit by another wave of infections. However, the government said it has planned ahead of time to keep the risk to a minimum and will continue its successful fight against the virus. Kerala cut active infections from 300 last month to 30 on Wednesday.
Approximately 15,000 stranded expatriates are expected to return to India from 13 countries, on 64 flights, over the next week. In total, the evacuation could see 200,000 to 300,000 people return from countries like the United States, the United Kingdom, Western Asia and Singapore.
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