New norms on migrants’ quarantine

Ranchi: With a large number of migrants returning to the state from various parts of the country, the state health department has issued a fresh set of standard operating procedure (SOP) to the districts for clinical examination, testing and monitoring suspected Covid-19 cases quarantined or isolated at various places. At the time of filing the report, 80 of 95 persons who tested positive for Covid-19 since May 5 are migrants.
Under the new guidelines, the Jharkhand government has listed 24 districts from 12 states and Union Territories (UTs) as high-risk and issued detailed protocols to be followed for quarantine and testing people, both symptomatic and asymptomatic, returning from these regions.
A letter issued by state health secretary Nitin Madan Kulkarni on Wednesday directed all district authorities to follow the SOPs for migrants retuning from the listed areas and other places.
Talking to TOI, Kulkarni said, “Under the new protocols, we have put people returning to the state in two categories — symptomatic and asymptomatic. Migrants returning from the listed districts will be kept in institutional quarantine and their samples will be collected immediately for testing, irrespective of their symptomatic or asymptomatic status. For people returning from other areas, only those with symptoms will be put up at institutional quarantine centres and asymptomatic patients will be put in home quarantine. The rest of the protocols will be same as earlier depending on their test results.”
He added that the fresh protocols will also be applicable to all those who have returned to Jharkhand before May 13.
The high-risk districts are Howrah, Kolkata and 24-North Parganas in West Bengal; Kurnool, Guntur and Krishna in Andhra Pradesh; Ahmedabad, Surat, Vadodra and Gandhinagar in Gujarat; Indore, Bhopal and Ujjain in Madhya Pradesh; Mumbai, Pune and Thane in Maharashtra; Jalandhar and Ludhiana in Punjab; Jaipur (Rajasthan), Chennai (Tamil Nadu); Hyderabad (Telangana); Bengaluru (Karnataka); Faridabad (Haryana) and New Delhi.
The new SOPs comes two days after Jharkhand refused to implement the Centre’s new discharge policy, which directed all states and UTs to do away with RT-PCR tests for asymptomatic and people with mild symptoms. The SOP also instructed district administrations to maintain surveillance of persons under home quarantine for 28 days after their discharge upon testing negative.