Health Department has hard time tracing UK returnees in Patiala district

Karam Prakash

Tribune News Service

Patiala, December 25

The district Health Department is having a hard time in tracing those who had returned from the UK to the district over the past few weeks. The returnees are being traced to prevent the spread of the new Covid strain.

The Health Department said the travellers were not reporting themselves to the authorities. Sources said travellers from the UK were continuously running off the health teams to avoid physical verification. The sources said some of the travellers had submitted wrong addresses and contact information on purpose.

The medical officer, who has been assigned the task of tracing of the travellers, said: “UK returnees do not respond to our calls. Some are even unavailable at their given addresses. In some cases, travellers, reportedly, have moved to their relative’s places to avoid the screening process.”

The Health Department said the UK travellers were trying to avoid surveillance and monitoring for 14 days as per the standard operating procedure.

Following this, Patiala Civil Surgeon Harish Malhotra made a public appeal to UK returnees to report to the district health department for screening at the earliest.

As per the information by the Health Department, around 110 travellers had come from the UK between November 25 and December 23.

Dr Malhotra said they had already traced 50 travellers while others would be traced soon. He said: “We have already requested the travellers from the UK to come forward and undergo testing for Covid-19. In some cases, we faced problems. However, our teams are working hard to trace them.”