Karnataka makes 7-day quarantine essential for travellers from these countries

As per a latest development, the Karnataka state government has now made home quarantine mandatory for seven days for passengers arriving at the Bengaluru airport from six countries, China, Thailand, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, and Singapore. This move comes in the wake of rising COVID cases in other countries. Meanwhile, the Centre has already announced that RT-PCR tests will be a must for those travelling from designated high-risk countries.

As per Karnataka’s revised guidelines, passengers arriving from these countries will have to provide COVID negative report before they are allowed to leave airport premises. Further, as per the guidelines, if any of the international passengers from the said countries are found symptomatic, they shall be isolated immediately, and will be transferred to the designated medical facility. Meanwhile, their samples should be collected and submitted for RT-PCR testing and genome sequencing.However, asymptomatic passengers will be allowed to leave the airport, but will be advised to self-monitor their health for COVID symptoms, and strictly follow COVID appropriate behaviour, like wearing face masks, maintaining social distancing, practice hand hygiene, and remain under home quarantine for next seven days.
If, in any case, they develop symptoms like cough, cold, fever, body ache, loss of taste and smell, breathing difficulty, and diarrhoea, they would need to self-isolate and report to the local surveillance team for testing.

In case the genome sequencing report shows BF.7 (after seven days) or confirms any new sub variant, another sample will be taken for the RT-PCR test, whereas the person will be expected to follow all the COVID protocols strictly.