‘Lucky to be back, it was a nightmare’
MOHALI: As many as 100 people from the region who got stuck in the US following the Covid-19 outbreak landed at the Chandigarh International Airport on Friday.
The Air India flight that carried them back landed at the airport via Delhi around 1.30pm. Most of the passengers had visited the US on tourist visas, but their trip soon turned into a nightmare after the outbreak hit the American soil.
“We are lucky to be back in our homeland. The Covid situation in the US was such, every passing day was becoming a nightmare,” said one of the passengers.
On touchdown, all passengers were medically screened for symptoms. They were sent to institutional quarantine for 14 days at their respective locations.
Of the 100 passengers, five are from Mohali, 12 from Haryana, 16 from Himachal Pradesh, nine from Chandigarh, two from
Uttarakhand and the rest from various districts of Punjab.
Sukhdarshan Singh, a native of Hoshiarpur in Punjab, who went to New York with his family in February, said, “I cannot express the happiness I felt on reaching my homeland. We were not sure if we would be able to come back. The situation in the US was pretty bad and we really wanted to leave.”
Mohali civil surgeon Dr Manjit Singh, who led the screening and medical examination of the passengers, said all were asymptomatic. District nodal officer Dr Harmandeep Kaur Brar said the passengers will be quarantined in their respective states for 14 days.
MORE RETURN FROM CANADA, MALAYSIA
Besides the nine passengers from US, 16 other Chandigarh residents returned from Canada and Malaysia on Friday. As many as 13 residents arrived from Canada, while three came from Malaysia.