Covid-19 New Guidelines For Travelers From Middle East And European Countries

Covid-19 New Guidelines are set and announced by BMC (Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation) due to the outbreak of new coronavirus strain of COVID- 19 detected in United Kingdom. Certain precaution measures for the newly arriving people and travelers from the middle east and European countries.

The pandemic effects of SARS virus COVID-19 haven’t completely eradicated this new form of the variant of corona virus created huge impact in the country. Therefore BMC established some of the precautions like quarantining for 14 day particularly for the people from Eastern countries.

The state government also instructed the municipal commissioners to arrange proper needs and arrangements for the quarantine passengers at international airports and separate hospitals for the suspects of virus variants.

The state government along with the bureaucrats of BMC and COVID task force officials released these guidelines on this Monday evening. It consists of the following measures which have to be strictly followed all over the state:

1. All the passengers from Middle East/ European countries should undergo institutional quarantine for seven days mandatorily at their own cost in a nearby hotel.
2. If the person has the symptoms at the time of arrival then he will be directed to G.T Hospital Fort, Mumbai for the treatment and further diagnosis.
3. There will not be any RT- PCR test during arrival. But at the fifth or seventh day of institutional quarantine the test will be conducted. If the passenger is tested negative then he will be advised to undergo a seven day home quarantine and discharged from the institutional quarantine. If the passenger is tested positive with no symptoms then he will be continued till 14 day of institutional quarantine.
4. In case of positive result of SARS CoV-2 virus, the samples were given to the National Institute of Virology (NIV) for further diagnosis. The study of genomic sequence is carried out there and the patient will be isolated in an isolation unit. Further samples are taken until it is tested negative.
5. Proper arrangements will be made for these passengers for their travel from airport to hotel.
6. Passengers have to pay the charges according to their choice of hotel. It is arranged that nearly 4000 rooms have been allocated daily for quarantining passengers.
7. All the contacts including the co passengers without any exception are subjected to institutional quarantine and RT-PCR tests as per ICMR guidelines.
8. The passports of the passengers will be deposited and returned back to them at the time of discharge.
9. PPE equipment’s were given to the workers of airport as well as the Immigration officers by the Mumbai International Airport Ltd.
10. The testing equipment’s and arrangements at the time of discharge of the passengers will be made by the private laboratories at the hotels and will be charged to the passengers.
11. Collector of Mumbai Suburban District will monitor these operations and depute suitable teams for its monitoring.
12. These protective guidelines are applicable to all the travelers of Middle East/ European countries arriving at arriving at Mumbai International Airport, irrespective of their purpose of visit or other travel plans.
13. The migration of these travelers to the neighboring states of the country should be immediately informed to the State Health Authority. If the passenger is untraceable initially will be informed to the Central Surveillance Unit of IDSP.

The above are some of the important instructions of protective measures for the passengers or transits from Middle East countries in the past four weeks mentioned on Monday evening by the Mumbai Corporation.