Bengaluru: Home quarantine for last overseas traveller ends on Monday

BENGALURU: With the last international traveller to have landed in Bengaluru set to complete 14 days of home quarantine on April 6, isolation for suspected Covid-19 cases will focus exclusively on primary and secondary contacts of the travellers and others who have tested positive for the virus.
The country’s first focus in the strategy to contain Covid-19 was on quarantining international passengers arriving from countries declared affected by World Health Organisation (WHO).India formally shut all international flight arrivals on March 22, when about 145 people reached Bengaluru from foreign destinations. The traveller whose quarantine is set to end on Monday landed here from the US on March 23.

As on Thursday, 12,700 international travellers had completed their quarantine period, while another 2,210 people continued to remain in isolation, BBMP data accessed by TOI revealed. Officials, however, declined to reveal details of the aforementioned traveller, citing privacy issues.
Till Friday morning, Bengaluru reported 45 Covid-19 positive cases: 30 from within BBMP limits and the rest from Bengaluru Urban district, according to data from BBMP’s war room.
About 198 primary and 239 secondary contacts of patients in BBMP limits and 203 primary and 3,245 secondary contacts of those in Bengaluru Urban were put under quarantine as on April 2. While the primary contacts were put in public quarantine facilities, the secondary ones were in home isolation.
According to BBMP officials, 107 of the 198 primary contacts and 47 of the 239 secondary contacts have completed their quarantine period. No details were immediately available on contacts of the Bengaluru Urban patients.
A major contributor to the large number of secondary cases in Bengaluru Urban was the first Covid-19 patient, whose 13-year-old daughter too was found to be infected. The girl had attended school and accounted for about 1,000 secondary contacts, BBMP officials explained.
They pointed out only a quarter of those infected in Bengaluru are primary or secondary contacts or have a vague source of infection, indicating that the virus spread has been contained as of now.
Dr Ravikumar Surpur, special commissioner (health), BBMP said, “Quarantine and isolation have played a vital role in ensuring the disease does not spread. Surveillance is the most important thing in quarantine. There are three major categories — the positive case, his or her primary contacts and secondary contacts. Patients would receive the necessary treatment, but it’s the primary contacts who need to be monitored to prevent further spread. This is critical. Secondary contacts can be easily handled later as chances of them getting infected are less.”
“All those who finish 14 days of quarantine would have to be under extra vigilance for another 14 days, which is called the reporting phase. We want to ensure nothing happens to them during this phase,” he said.