BENGALURU: The Karnataka High Court on Tuesday sought an explanation from the State Government for not conducting RT-PCR tests on more than 700 passengers who returned from the UK.Hearing Covid-related PILs, a division bench of Chief Justice Abhay Shreeniwas Oka and Justice Aravind Kumar passed the order asking the government to explain the discrepancy in numbers after it noticed that over 700 UK returnees have not been subjected to RT-PCR tests.
The State Government submitted to the high court that from December 7, 2020, 3,137 people had returned from the UK to India. Nine of passengers and one primary contact of one of the passengers tested positive for the UK strain.
Of the 3,137 passengers, 3,062 have been traced and 75 are yet to be found. However, RT-PCR tests were conducted on 2,292 passengers. Of them, test results of 176 passengers are awaited, while 34 passengers and 14 of their primary contacts tested positive.