Testing time for foreign returnees

Those who test positive in the Rapid PCR test at Kempe Gowda airport have to go for institutional quarantine at state hospitals. Many are asymptomatic and some even test negative in later tests. However, they end up spending time amid Covid patients and get exposed to the virus. NT examines this worrying issue.

Kumaran P | NT

Bengaluru: In another bizarre incident, a 27-year-old woman landed at the Kempegowda International Airport on Wednesday and had to undergo the mandatory Covid-19 test at the arrival gate.

She tested positive for her Rapid PCR test and was immediately taken in the ambulance to a hospital. She was made to travel to four hospitals in the city for about four hours and finally admitted to Bowring and Lady Curzon hospital.

This 27-year-old did not have any symptom and she was not given an option to quarantine at a facility that she wished to on Wednesday. She told News Trail,, “They have taken my RT-PCR test and the result has not come out until Thursday evening. I do not have any symptom and I am fine. I have been requesting every person at Bowring Hospital but no one is allowing me to go home and isolate. I have been telling them that I will get isolated at home and the hospital is not allowing this.”

Another reported bungling by the airport authorities was that in her Covid test report she has been mentioned as ‘male’. “I raised this with officials in the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) and it was not changed. Why will someone put a person amongst Covid-19 positive patients when my RTPCR result has not been proved yet?” she questioned.

Meanwhile, by late evening her RTPCR result was handed over to her and she tested negative, but by then she had almost spent 24 hours in the Covid-19 triage ward at the 7th floor of Bowring hospital!

When NT reached out to D Ranadeep, commissioner of Health and Family Welfare department, he said, “If she is not positive and is asymptomatic, she shall be in home quarantine till there is certainty about the result. As a matter of abundant caution, she can test again on the 3rd day.”

Interestingly, within a few hours after this incident Thursday evening, the commissioner issued the rules for international passengers and stated that whoever turns positive at the arrival port at the international airport will be institutionally quarantined.