NAGPUR: The Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) has been successful in tracing 98 out of 204 persons who landed at city’s airport from Europe, Middle East and South Africa. Of the 98 flyers, Covid tests were done on 96. Whereabouts of remaining 106 flyers (52%) are still not known.
As per NMC data, two lists of 204 persons who returned from these countries were received from Bureau of Immigration on December 24 and 25.
An NMC official told TOI, “The passport of these flyers mentioned Nagpur in the address. The lists had contact numbers but not complete address. Our teams called on all the numbers to find out that 131 flyers were from the city. The remaining 73 are residents of other places. We have sent their names to the respective collector offices,” he said.
The NMC has not received any replies from the collector offices and not aware whether flyers were traced and tested, said the official.
Of total 131 flyers from the city, tests were conducted on 96. Five of them tested positive.
NMC official added, “We exempted two children, one and two years old, from tests as their mothers came negative.”
Remaining 33 flyers from city are untraceable, as per NMC officials. “Their numbers are either switched off or not in use. We have written to police stations to trace these persons. They will be tested as soon as their location is known,” said the official.
Municipal commissioner Radhakrishnan B had appointed Government Medical College and Hospital (GMCH) which developed special ward and admitted suspected patients of new variant of Covid-19 virus which had emerged in UK.
Three more residents of the city who returned from UK tested positive and have been admitted to GMCH’s special ward as suspected patients of the new virus strain which emerged from UK. But their names were not in the list received by the NMC.
Names of a man, his wife and son were in the list of Janjgir in Bilaspur district. Man and son tested positive while wife came negative. Still, NMC traced them and admitted to GMCH’s special ward.
One suspected patient on his own disclosed to the NMC about his travel history to UK when tested positive.
The NMC with the help of GMCH and IGGMCH sent swab samples of all the positive patients to National Institute of Virology (NIV), Pune, for genome sequencing.
Names of 24 more citizens who returned from these particular countries in last nine days were also not there in the lists sent by Bureau of Immigration.
Under a system developed by Radhakrishnan, additional municipal commissioner Sanjay Nipane and medical officer Dr Sanjay Chilkar, an undertaking is being taken from all flyers whether they have visited these countries in the last three weeks. The 24 flyers were traced in this system and admitted to quarantine centres.
As per civic body’s data, out of 24 flyers, 11 tested negative and were kept in quarantine centres for two weeks. They were discharged in last two days. Tests of remaining persons will be conducted. In case of negative report, they will be allowed to leave after one week.