With spurt in Covid-19 cases in many countries including neighbouring China, the Centre has recently issued fresh guidelines to tighten the surveillance across the cities and airports across the country. The Centre made Covid-19 testing mandatory for all foreign returnees in all the airports. However, a woman and her six-year-old daughter, who returned from China via Colombo, tested positive for Covid-19 at the Madurai airport in Tamil Nadu, a senior health official said on Wednesday.
The woman, hailing from Virudhunagar near Madurai, and her daughter were subjected to RT-PCR test at the airport when they landed on Tuesday and the results turned positive for coronavirus, the official said. Both are under home isolation in Virudhunagar. Their samples would be sent to the state lab for whole genomic sequencing.
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On Tuesday, Tamil Nadu had reported 10 positive cases while the number of active cases remained at 51. The Tamil Nadu government had intensified the screening of all passengers who arrived at the four airports in the state immediately after the sudden surge in coronavirus cases in China and other countries.
On Tuesday, state Health Minister Ma Subramanian, while inspecting a COVID-19 mock drill at the Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital, had said that the government is fully prepared to tackle the outbreak, if any.
The Tamil Nadu government on Monday directed private hospitals and labs across the State to send COVID-19-positive samples to government lab for whole genomic sequencing (WGS) to monitor existing variants and detect newer variants. With the focus on a 5-fold strategy to test, track, treat, vaccination and adherence to Covid-appropriate behaviour, he said Tamil Nadu has been able to restrict the transmission of the deadly virus and sees about 60 cases on a weekly basis.
(With PTI inputs)