225 co-flyers of infected man to undergo RT-PCR

Kolkata: The Bengal government will conduct fresh RT-PCR tests for all the 225 passengers who landed in Kolkata by the same Air India direct flight from the UK as the man in his late 30s, who had been detected with the new UK strain of the novel coronavirus, a senior state official said on Wednesday.

Among those travellers, 46 flyers, who either sat in close proximity of the infected person for over nine hours on the flight or waited with him at the old terminal in Kolkata to get their RT-PCR test results, will continue to remain under watch even if their Covid test reports came negative. They have been asked to strictly abide by home quarantine measures and contact the health department at the slightest sign of developing Covid-like symptoms.

The man, who is believed to have contracted the new strain of the virus in the UK, had arrived in Kolkata on December 20.

Of the 226 passengers travelling on that flight, 26 had not got Covid tests done in the UK and underwent RT-PCR tests on arrival. Two among them were found to be Covid-19 positive. While one of them had the normal strain that has already infected millions across the world, the other had the UK strain that has been detected only recently and has led to renewed lockdowns in the country. “The passenger with the UK stain of the novel coronavirus was travelling in Seat 28-J, which is a window seat. That is a stroke of luck because only passengers seated in the right row may have been infected and need to be carefully monitored. Had he travelled in the middle row, the situation would have been more complicated,” an official said. The Boeing 787 Dreamliner is a wide-body aircraft with twin aisles and nine seats split into three pairs in each row. They are numbered A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H and J.

From the passenger manifest, the health department has identified flyers seated in rows 25 to 31. In each row, passengers in seats F, G, H and J, or 27 passengers, will be cautioned to stay in home quarantine and monitor their health. Also, 25 people in addition to the infected flyer, who had undergone RT-PCR tests and spent several hours together in the confined space of a terminal, will be alerted.

31/12/20 Subhro Niyogi/Times of India

To Read the News in full at Source, Click the Headline

Categories: Air India Dec 2020, Foreign Dec 2020