COVID-19: Manipur to cancel flights for 10 days to clear backlog of 15,000 tests

Faced with a rush of people stranded in rest of the country, Manipur on Monday decided to cancel flights for 10 days from Thursday in order to clear the backlog of 15,000 tests for COVID-19.

In a letter to Usha Padhee, joint secretary of union civil aviation ministry, Manipur chief secretary, J. Suresh Babu sought a directive to all the airlines, DGCA and Airport Authority of India to cancel flights to Imphal.

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"Due to heavy inflow of people, there is substantial delay in testing in all those returning from rest of the country and there is huge backlog of 15,000 samples pending results. Five flights lands in Imphal airport daily. The state government has decided to stop all flights for a period of 10 days in order to clear the pending backlog of testing and also clear the congestion in the quarantine centres," said the letter.

Manipur decided to conduct RT-PCR tests of all those returning to the state in order to prevent community transmission of COVID-19. Only those testing negative are allowed to go to home quarantine. A total of 27, 562 persons are now in quarantine centres (both govt and community run) in Manipur.

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This was decided after increase in COVID-19 positive cases. Manipur on Monday detected 32 new positive cases taking the tally to 490 so far. There are only two testing laboratories in the state.

Manipur's move come days after Assam also urged the civil aviation ministry to restrict the number of daily flights to 25 in order to ensure social distancing in the airports. Assam's tally of COVID-19 cases increased to 4,158 of which 1981 are still active. Eight people died due to COVID-19 so far in the state.