AHMEDABAD: Four passengers who arrived by
Air India flight AI-1172 from
Heathrow airport in London to Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International airport in Ahmedabad at 10.30am on Tuesday tested Covid-19 positive.
They were among the 269 passengers and crew members who arrived at the city airport from London. They flew into the city just a day before the suspension of flights to and from the UK following the reports of the emergence of a new, highly
infectious strain of Covid-19 virus there.
All the four passengers — three men and a woman — were taken to SVP Hospital in Ahmedabad and are currently being treated there. “Their blood samples have been sent to the National Institute of Virology (NIV), Pune, for genome sequencing. We will soon know about the strain of the virus,” said O P Machra, deputy municipal commissioner, AMC.
Health department officials said the samples will also be sent to the Gujarat Biotechnology Research Centre (GBRC) for confirming the strain of the virus locally. “We need to determine if the viral strain is the newly discovered mutated variant or something different,” said a top official.
“Of those who tested positive, two are from Anand and one each from Bharuch and Diu. All passengers who tested positive are persons of Indian origin,” a top official said. “The passenger from Bharuch, however, is a British passport holder.”
Based on Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) guidelines, all flights to/from the UK have been suspended till December 31. In accordance with the instruction, the state-owned carrier Air India, which operates Vande Bharat flights connecting Ahmedabad to London twice a week, cancelled its flight AI-1171 from Ahmedabad to London, scheduled to depart on Tuesday.
Swab samples of all the AI-1172 passengers and crew were collected for RT-PCR tests soon after their arrival. When the passengers entered Terminal 2, they were contained on the first floor itself. Besides health department officials, a team of CISF personnel were deployed to cordon off the area.
Passengers who tested negative could leave the airport by about 5pm. However, they will have to remain under quarantine as stipulated by the revised norms.