Govt: Strict travel restrictions step towards containing virus
Experts did risk assessment before the unanimous decision to suspend visas
NEW DELHI: India’s decision to put the country in a state of partial lockdown by suspending almost all visas for entering the country for a month is aimed at containing the spread of the novel coronavirus (Covid-19) because all cases of the infection that have surfaced in the country so far can be traced to international travel, the government said on Thursday. “... putting travel restrictions in place is the best way of containing the spread of disease,” said Lav Aggarwal, joint secretary in the Union ministry of health and family welfare, noting that all 74 Covid-19 positive cases reported in India resulted from the entry of infected travellers into the country.
“India is not the only country enforcing strict travel restrictions... Our experts have done risk assessment of the situation, and it was unanimously decided to suspend visas. This is an effort to save lives,” he added.
India on Wednesday announced cancellation of all existing visas, except diplomatic, official, UN/international organizations, and employment and project visas, until April 15. The visa restrictions will come into effect from Friday at the ports of departure. The decision was taken at the second meeting of the group of ministers that was held in Nirman Bhawan on Wednesday and presided over by Union minister of health and family welfare Harsh Vardhan.
“There is no community transmission in the country as of now. All the cases that we are seeing so far are travel-related and local cluster transmissions related to the travellers who arrived from the affected countries. Restricting non-essential travel is important for better containment of the infection,” said Dr RR Gangakhedkar, epidemiology head at the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).
The World Health Organisation (WHO) on Wednesday declared Covid-19 a pandemic.
India, for now, will stick to conservative testing of swab samples of people with a recent travel history, contact history with patients or people with symptoms. “India put in place emergency measures even before WHO declared the disease a public health emergency of international concern. The experts don’t feel the need as of now to go for aggressive testing even though we have the capacity of being able to test at least 1 lakh samples, with more testing kits being in the process of procurement,” said Aggarwal.
India’s response was initiated on January 8, much before WHO declared Covid-19 a public health emergency on January 30. Screening started on January 17 at Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata airports which was extended to Chennai, Cochin, Bengaluru and Hyderabad as well on January 21. Universal screening was later extended to 30 airports.
Screening is also underway on people arriving at 12 major sea ports and 65 non-major ports, and major land border crossings.
The government has about 35,000 people under community surveillance who either have a travel history or have come into contact with people who have returned from a trip abroad to affected countries. As part of contact tracing of the 74 Covid-19 positive cases, about 1,500 contacts who had come in direct contact with patients have been traced and are under observation.
The government has added 20 more lines to the already operational 10 lines of the national helpline number- 011-23978046. All the states and Union territories have also activated emergency helpline numbers .
Experts at ICMR say there is no need for larger-scale testing yet.
“There are 52 regional laboratories, and 56 collection centres at work that are able to manage the rush of samples. We are not challenged in terms of number of samples that the labs are receiving, given we have done only about 6,000 tests in a span of 1.5 months,” said Dr Gangakhedkar.