Ship with 698 from Male reaches Kochi; Flight from Doha cancelled

As many as 698 persons evacuated from Maldives reached the Cochin Port in Kerala by Indian Navy's Jalaswa ship on Sunday.

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Among them 595 were males and 103 females, including 19 pregnant women and 14 children below the age of 10. Majority of the passengers were from Kerala and Tamil Nadu, while natives of 18 states also came by the ship.

Passengers were subjected to COVID-19 screening at the port and the district administration arranged transportation and quarantine facilities. BSNL provided SIM cards to everyone and Aarogya Setu application was installed on their phones.

An aircraft with 181 NRIs from Doha scheduled to reach Thiruvananthapuram by Sunday night was cancelled in the last minute. One Karnataka native, 19 from Tamil Nadu and one from Maharashtra were among the passengers expected to come by the flight. Kerala Tourism Minister Kadakampally Surendran said that some passengers scheduled to come by the flight were denied permission to travel due to some technical reasons and hence, the flight was cancelled. The flight was expected to operate on Tuesday.

As per the revised scheme of the government, those with COVID-19 symptoms would be shifted to quarantine facilities arranged in all districts and others would be instructed to remain in home quarantine.

Meanwhile, of the 535 NRIs who came down in three aircraft in Kochi on Saturday, five were found to be having COVID-19 symptoms and were shifted to COVID care centre. Already 17 other NRIs who returned since Thursday were shifted to COVID care centres with symptoms, of which two were tested positive.

There were unconfirmed reports that many with symptoms like fever were taking medicines just ahead of traveling to Kerala from other states and other countries to suppress the fever during screening at airports and border check posts.

Health department officials said that it was difficult to detect such persons during thermal screening. Once the government receives adequate number of anti-body test kits all coming into the state could be subjected to anti-body test at the entry points itself.