The Uttarakhand government on Wednesday increased the mandatory quarantine period for people coming from 75 “high load Covid-19 cities” across the country from 14 to 21 days amid a rise in the number of people testing positive for coronavirus in the state.
The government issued a fresh standard operating procedure (SOP) for people coming to the state by any mode of transport from the list of 75 cities designated as high load Covid-19 ones which include major cities like, Chennai, Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Noida, Varanasi, Jaipur, Indore, Pune, Ahmedabad, Agra, Lucknow, Jaipur and Hyderabad.
According to the SOP released by chief secretary Utpal Kumar Singh, the people coming from the 75 listed cities, will have to go into the institutional quarantine of seven days followed by home quarantine of 14 days. People coming from other non-high load Covid-19 cities will only have to undergo home quarantine of 14 days as it was earlier.
The SOP states that those coming from any of the listed cities will have to follow the latest guideline irrespective of their mode of transport.
Inbound people will have an option for institutional quarantine. They can either choose government institutional quarantine which is a non-payment based, or a payment based institutional quarantine which would likely be in a hotel for which the payment would be made by the quarantined person.
Earlier on Wednesday, chief minister Trivendra Singh Rawat said that so far about 2.50 lakh migrants have come from other states in Uttarakhand. As a precautionary measure, they are being screened on their arrival at railway stations and airports followed by quarantine. If anyone is found with symptoms of Covid-19, he/she is being immediately admitted to a hospital.
Uttarakhand has reported a total 1,066 cases of the virus till Wednesday evening of which 259 have recovered. There has been no Covid-19 casualty so far in the state.
