NEW DELHI: Cabinet secretary Rajiv Gauba on Thursday questioned the alertness of states in monitoring people with recent foreign travel history, saying there appeared to be a “gap” between those monitored for COVID-19 and over 15 lakh Indian international travellers who filtered into states between January 18 to March 23.
Asking all states and union territories to immediately intensify surveillance of people with international travel history, he said the gap in monitoring “may seriously jeopardise the efforts to contain the spread of COVID-19.”
Sources said the 15 lakh figure pertained to only air travellers and not those entering India through seaports or international land borders.
Gauba’s letter to states said, “As you are aware, we initiated the screening of international incoming passengers from January 18 and up to March 23, Bureau Of Immigration has registered over 15 lakh incoming international passengers with the States/UTs for monitoring for coronavirus. However, there appears to be a gap between the number of international passengers who need to be monitored by the States/UTs and the actual number of passengers being monitored.”
He stressed that putting all international passengers under close surveillance is important to prevent the pandemic while citing repeated directives of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) in this regard.
The Centre has effected an unprecedented 21-day countrywide lockdown to check the pandemic which has already infected over 700 people and claimed 17 lives. This newspaper had reported on March 18 about states complaining to Centre about delays in getting a list of international passengers.
However, the number of people with foreign travel history in just four states of Maharashtra, UP, West Bengal, Punjab and Delhi add up to around 12.7 lakh. Maharashtra’s Mumbai International airport screened around 3 lakh persons while the state recorded the highest number of 153 confirmed cases and five deaths.
“Out of them, 16513 are home quarantine,d while 1045 suspects have been isolated.UP received 6 lakh people from abroad but could track about 1.32 lakh people besides screening 15,47,277 at international check posts. It found 46092 travellers had originated from worst-affected countries, while 45540 were foreigners.
West Bengal received around 1.15 lakh people from abroad and quarantined 12,000 people.
Punjab officials said it traced almost all of 48,000 people with travel history, barring wrong addressees. Punjab Chief Secretary Karan A Singh said the Centre was asked on January 29 asking it to give lists of NRIs but received handwritten names.
“We kept insisting and when we did not get it, had to digitise them before tracking the cases.”
According to officials in Delhi government, the national capital has received a total of 2,09,567 passengers from COVID affected countries and they have all been screened.
Inputs: Sana Shakil, Sudhir Suryawanshi, Namita Bajpai, Harpreet Bajwa, Pranab Mondal and Somrita Ghosh