2 girls placed under home quarantine in Arunachal for sitting next to COVID-19 positive man in flight

The Tawang district administration in Arunachal Pradesh has placed two girls under home quarantine after they were found to have travelled in the same flight with a man from Mizoram, who tested positive for COVID-19, a senior government official said on Friday.

The girls, both students, were seated next to the 50- year-old man on a New Delhi-Guwahati flight on March 16, he said.

"Their samples have been collected by officials in Tawang and sent to the Gauhati Medical College and Hospital (GMCH) on Thursday evening," Health and Family Welfare Secretary P Parthiban said.

The girls are under home quarantine in Tawang. The elderly pastor, who recently returned from Amsterdam, tested positive for COVID-19 in Mizoram on Tueday, making it the second case of the disease in the northeast.

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Meanwhile, the Arunachal Pradesh Police registered 20 FIRs and detained 133 people in the last 24 hours for violating lockdown rules.

Police also imposed fine on people to the tune of Rs 1,68,700 during the period, DGP R P Upadhyaya said in Itanagar.

"We have set up a dedicated 24-hour control room in the state capital for the 21-day lockdown phase," he said.

The DGP added that all the district SPs have been asked to strictly enforce the lockdown, particularly at the 38 permanent and 50 temporary check posts spread across the state.

Essential services like groceries, vegetable markets and medicine shops are allowed to remain open, he said.

In another development, employees under the aegis of Confederation of Service Associations of Arunachal Pradesh (CoSAAP) on Friday said they will contribute a day's salary to the Chief Minister's Relief Fund (CMRF) to assist the state government in its effort to contain the coronavirus pandemic, a release said.

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