Kolkata: The Kolkata airport has placed a bulk order for Rapid Antigen Test (RAT) kits following the state government order to test every international passenger on arrival at the city airport from this Monday — January 3.
Prior to this week, only RT-PCR and Rapid PCR testing was available at the airport, which is being conducted by Hindlabs — a government of India enterprise — but owing to the revised notification, the agency is buying bulk kits on regular basis to test around 550 odd passengers on a daily basis starting from Monday.
According to the order, 90% of passengers need to undergo RAT and the rest to be tested with RT-PCR and those tested positive with RAT need to undergo RT-PCR again.
“At present, there are around four international flights arriving at the airport regularly, which means that around 600 passengers would need to take the test daily. As per the order, around 540 of them would take the RAT and the rest would have to go for RT-PCR or Rapid PCR tests. We have made necessary arrangements and instructed the agency to keep test kits stock ready for 10 days,” said C Pattabhi, airport director.
The authorities have fixed Rs 490 for the mandatory RAT tests, whose report will be available within 20-30 minutes. The cost of RT-PCR and Rapid PCR test at the airport is Rs 600 and Rs 2,900, respectively. The reports will be available within 6 hours and 45 minutes, respectively.
02/01/22 Tamaghna Banerjee/Times of India
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