Dubai passengers deboarded after Briton tested positive
TRIVANDRUM: Cochin airport in Kerala had to deplane all passengers on a Dubai-bound flight on Sunday morning after one of them tested positive for COVID-19.
Later in the afternoon, the flight left for Dubai without suspected cases after the passengers underwent a medical examination.
An airport official said the passenger, identified only as a native of the UK, was on the Emirates’s Sunday morning flight.
“He was part of a group of 19 people holidaying in Munnar who boarded from here,” PS Jayan, corporate communications manager of the airport, told Gulf Today.
“He was in quarantine and tested positive for the virus. We were informed of this only after he boarded the plane which was about to depart.”
The group was staying in the state-run Tea County resort in the hill station, 95 km away from the airport, since March 8 and was under observation.
As they came from the UK, the health authorities sent their samples for tests and asked them to self-isolate in their rooms until the results come.
Health authorities claimed that they left for the airport defying their orders. They were to transit in Dubai on their way to London.
“There were 270 passengers on the flight that he boarded. The group came to the airport without informing the authorities,” Jayan said.
“By the time the test result on his samples came, he was already there at the airport. So it has been decided to offload all the passengers and send them for tests.”
The flight EK 531 left with 250 passengers, leaving out 20 people, including the group. One of them opted not to fly.
The airport was closed for traffic from 10 am to 6 pm for runway resurfacing since November 20 for four months. However, it allowed the Emirate flight to take off at 12.47 pm.
The health authorities put the patient, and his wife in a hospital quarantine and sent back others to the resort for self-isolation along with its 40 staff members.
The district authorities sounded a high alert in the touristy town amid widespread scare in the state, the first to report positive cases in India early last month.
Cochin airport is now conducting universal screening for all inbound people as some international passengers landed in India elsewhere are arriving at its domestic terminal.
It has 60 health professionals, including 30 doctors, to screen them. Ten ambulances are also on standby offering 24-hour services to hospitalise suspected cases.