From June 25, Kerala will give operational clearance only to airline companies and chartered flight operators which ferry COVID-19 positive and COVID-19 negative passengers on separate flights.
The government has accorded an extra time of five days to flight operators and expatriate associations to set up COVID-19 testing facilities at the points of departure to ensure that no passenger boarded a flight to the State untested.
In touch with Centre
Chief Secretary Vishwas Mehta told The Hindu that Kerala was in touch with the Centre to lobby the Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Oman and Bahrain governments to allow Indian embassies, flight operators and expatriate organisations to set up relatively speedier and cheaper TrueNat Beta CoV testing facilities there. Kerala was trying to rush the testing kits to the countries to ensure that no untested passenger boarded a flight to the State.
He said the UAE and Qatar, which accounted for the bulk of arrivals, had sound testing facilities in place for residents and gave no cause for worry for Kerala. Unlike the RT-PCR (reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction) test, TrueNat did not require a laboratory environment. ‘‘It could be done anywhere.’’ Kerala could not discount the threat of community transmission from asymptomatic travellers, he said. New arrivals accounted for the bulk of new COVID-19 cases in the State. More than 2 lakh expatriates are scheduled to arrive soon. Over 300 flights have been scheduled from June 25.
Caseload
The State could not afford a slip-up. Mr Mehta said the government had to walk a tightrope between returning expatriates and insulating the local population from the transmission of the disease. “We can't allow Keralites to risk their health further in epidemic ravaged regions. However, the government also has to ensure at the same time that the COVID-19 caseload in Kerala did not escalate to the alarming levels witnessed in New Delhi and Mumbai,” he said.