The 125 passengers were sent to an Amritsar hospital yesterday for treatment and isolation.
The Indian authorities are investigating the irregularities of a charter flight from Italy, with 125 passengers on board positive for coronavirus despite having left Milan with negative certificates of the virus.
“A charter flight from Italy landed at Amritsar airport with 179 passengers (…) Of them, 160 were examined on arrival and 125 tested positive,” the international air terminal office told Efe.
Of this group, 19 passengers were exempted from the tests because they were children, explained an official at the Sri Guru Ram Dass Jee airport in Amritsar, in the northern state of Punjab, who asked not to mention their names.
Although all the passengers had submitted negative certificates, in accordance with the protocol established by the Indian authorities, they were subjected to further tests upon arrival at the airport.
“The necessary actions have been taken,” added the office, which specified in this regard that a procedure has been initiated with the airport of origin to determine if there was any failure in the protocol.
The 125 passengers were sent to an Amritsar hospital yesterday for treatment and isolation.
Images disseminated on social networks show dozens of people protesting the retention of passengers, attributing the positives to an alleged conspiracy or an error by the airport authorities.
Another 35 passengers, whose results were negative, were able to evade the institutional quarantine although they will be monitored by the authorities.
Several Indian media today reported the “escape” of thirteen of the passengers who were interned in medical centers, which has prompted new actions by the authorities.
“If they don’t come back in the morning, we will publish their photos in the newspaper,” Amritsar Deputy Commissioner Gurpreet Singh Khehra warned in a statement to NDTV.
India is experiencing a new wave of coronavirus infections, registering 117,100 new cases in the last 24 hours, the largest increase in seven months.
In India, 483,178 people have died from the coronavirus in just under two years, 302 of them in the last 24 hours. (I)
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