The passengers have been asked to immediately isolate themselves and report to the authorities otherwise their pictures and details would be made public.
Amritsar: After 125 passengers of an international chartered flight from Italy tested positive for COVID on arrival at Punjab’s Amritsar airport, 13 passengers have managed to give authorities the slip. According to reports, nine managed to flee from the airport and four of them managed to flee from the hospital. The patients, who ran away from hospital were admitted to Amritsar’s Guru Nanak Dev Hospital.
The District Collector has directed SP Amritsar to register a case against 13 passengers who violated the COVID-related protocols. They have also been asked to immediately isolate themselves and report to the authorities otherwise their pictures and details would be made public.
Deputy Commissioner of Amritsar Gurpreet Singh Khehra said the authorities will initiate proceedings to cancel their passport if they don’t return. “If they don’t return by morning, we will publish their photos in the newspaper,” he warned, adding, FIRs under the Epidemic Act and the Disaster Management Act will be registered against them…We are trying our best to keep our district away from the disease and negligence of patients will not be tolerated at any cost,” NDTV reported Khera as saying.
According to VK Seth, Amritsar Airport director, “125 passengers of an international chartered flight from Italy have tested positive for COVID-19 on arrival at Amritsar airport. Total passengers on the flight were 179”.
While 13 of the passengers were from Amritsar, the biggest group of 26 was from Hoshiarpur in the state, 10 from Haryana and one each from Rajasthan and Jammu and Kashmir.
The situation at the airport turned tense as a war of words ensued between the administration and the passengers, who said that all of them had produced negative Covid-19 reports before boarding the flight and that it was highly unlikely that so many of them had tested positive on arrival.
As per the Union Health Ministry, all adult passengers were tested on arrival as Italy is one of the high-risk countries for Omicron.
To date, Punjab has reported a total of 6,08,723 COVID-19 cases with 16,657 deaths. The state has administered 2,70,28,217 COVID vaccine doses under the nationwide vaccination drive.
