Bengaluru-based COVID-19 patient on Goa flight triggers row

The presence of a 67-year-old Bengaluru-based COVID-19 patient’s presence in a Dubai-Goa-Bengaluru flight on March 9 has caused a controversy in the coastal state.

On Wednesday, former tourism minister Francisco Pacheco, who was also on the same AI-994 flight as the Bengaluru-based woman, alleged that the efforts made by the BJP-led coalition government’s health ministry to quarantine him because of his presence on the flight were politically motivated.

“I will not go to quarantine because there is no reason for it. This is political vendetta because I am campaigning against the BJP candidates in the Zilla Panchayat elections,” Pacheco told reporters here. ZP polls in 50 constituencies are scheduled to be held on March 22.

The former minister also said that he had managed to evade efforts of three medical teams sent by the health ministry to his residence to quarantine him on Wednesday.

“They came with ambulances to quarantine me. How can I have have Coronavirus when I was in the fourth row of the flight and there was no passenger for five rows around me,” Pacheco said.

Earlier, Health Minister Vishwajit Rane created a stir, when he said that a politician was among prominent people who were in the same flight as the Covid-19 patient.

“Around her, there were prominent people. A team has gone to trace and quarantine them. It is important to do so. Everybody is equal. It is to do with the lives of the people,” Rane had said.

Forty-three passengers alighted from the Dubai-Goa- Bengaluru flight at Goa’s Dabolim International Airport on March 9, out of whom 30 have been home-quarantined and efforts are being made by the health department to trace eight other passengers. Goa has not reported a single confirmed Covid-19 case yet, according to Rane.