With no instance of re-infection among recovered patients in this part of the country, they must be allowed to travel and man frontline jobs, says an expert.

A survey has found that people who have recovered from COVID-19 infection want a certificate that would allow them to travel and work without being quarantined.

At present, many State governments have ruled that inter-state travellers must be quarantined for a certain period to prevent the spread of infection. This results in people having to be quarantined for several weeks even when they make a day’s visit outside their current location.

LocalCircle, an organisation which terms itself a social media for communities and governance, recently conducted the survey among over 16,000 persons in 212 districts across the country to assess the reception for COVID-19 warrior passes that would enable them travel freely without restrictions, even into hotspot areas.

While 67% respondents were men 33% were women. Around 51% respondents were from tier-1 cities, 33% from tier-2 and 16% respondents were from tier-3 and 4 towns and rural districts.

The idea of COVID-19 warriors was mooted by Abdul Ghafur, coordinator, Chennai Declaration on Anti Microbial Resistance, and consultant, infectious diseases at Apollo Hospitals.

Dr. Ghafur said people who had recovered from the infection could resume work and could be deployed as frontline staff to protect those who had not been exposed to the virus yet.

“The infection started spreading in January, and based on evidence of the 20 million, we know that those who were infected early have shown strong immunity for seven months. Such people should be allowed to travel without quarantine. In Chennai alone on Tuesday, 4.5 lakh people are in quarantine for travel,” he said.

Local Circle’s survey found that 69% of those who had recovered were willing to return to travel on work if they were given a certificate. The survey also asked how the certificate should be linked. As many as 61% of the respondents said it could be linked to the Aadhaar card.

Dr. Ghafur said linking the certificate to Aadhaar would not be a problem as the government had the details of all the infected persons. “The government has been running the RT-PCR test to diagnose the infection. It has the Aadhaar identification and in event of a re-infection, the government can revoke the certificate,” he said.

According to him the strategy would help the economy recover. “We cannot restart big factories but small-scale industry can resume functioning. Individual workers and office-goers who have recovered can be utilised to travel to hotspots and work. This would benefit drivers, healthcare workers and even shops. The shops could put in the frontline, the recovered workers, and this would also allow people to go shopping. It is just another step in opening up the economy,” Dr. Ghafur explained.