Institutional quarantine for foreign returnees may go

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, September 11

With just 0.98 per cent of foreign returnees having been found to be Covid-19 positive in the past few months, the authorities across the state have sought a review for the need to have seven-day mandatory institutional quarantine for them.

The authorities are of the view that there is no need to send only the returnees to institutional quarantine at a time now when the positive, mildly symptomatic patients in Punjab are being allowed home quarantine. Also they feel that the step is no longer required when the sero-surveys in Punjab are currently showing more than 27 per cent of the population to be infected.

As per the health authorities, only 200 of the 20,600 foreign returnees alighting at Mohali have been found to be coronavirus positive. Also, since Karnataka, Odisha and Kerala have changed the SOPs allowing foreign returnees to do away with institutional quarantine, even Punjab is mulling a change that will relieve the authorities as well as the returnees to a large extent.

DC Mohali Girish Dayalan said, “In light of the present situation, there is no need of making foreign returnees to undergo institutional quarantine. I have submitted my opinion on the matter to the government.”