Hyderabad: The four new cases of Omicron detected in Hyderabad on Thursday took the Telangana charge from the deadly mutated variant to six so far.
While experts say striking gaps in the policy do not put positive Covid-19 patients in institutional quarantine can help spread omicrons quickly in the state, health authorities say they only follow central guidelines.
Of the four new cases, three were international passengers who landed at Hyderabad Airport from Kenya, ‘non-risk’ state, while the fourth passenger from India returned from England, notified as a ‘risky’ state.
Sources were confirmed to TOI that the three of them were medical tourists, in the city both for treatment or as patient participants.
Officials personally said that they were worried that the trio might have spread the virus when they interact with a number of people after landing and before they were tracked.
“Investigation continues and we will share more details tomorrow,” said Dr.
G Srinivasa Rao, Director (Public Health).
While some countries are proactively placing positive Covid-19 international passengers in institutional quarantine, even if they arrive from non-risk countries, in Hyderabad, the authorities allow them to go home after taking samples for the genome sequencing.
‘It is not feasible to test all passengers’ guidelines by the Ministry of Health and family welfare on November 30 say: “If passengers from (2% of the total flight passengers) are positive tests, they will be managed in accordance with the standard protocol and the sample will be sent for testing.” While experts say there is a striking gap not determining whether this patient must be placed in the center of quarantine based on mandatory or sent home, the law has been described differently by the state.
In Chennai, passengers from non-risk countries were allowed to go after taking their samples, but in Mumbai and Kolkata, every international passenger, apart from the port of origin, was placed in the hospital if they tested positive.
A 7-year-old boy who traveled to Kolkata even after a positive test in the RT-PCR test in Hyderabad went to the Murshidabad district.
In two previous cases in Hyderabad, the two foreign nationals had left the airport after providing large-scale samples and hunting must be launched to track them after they tested Omicron’s positive.
But with increasing cases, experts show that supervision at the airport will not work again and ‘individual responsibilities’ will now play an important role.
“While on the one hand, testing and isolating all passengers is not feasible, even if the 20% of passengers tested will not be picked up and may change positive after 2-3 days …” said Dr.
Rakesh Mishra, director of the Tata Institute of Genetics and the community.
“We must focus on our strong points – the level of peposititivity and high sero vaccination – and discipline.”