E-pass relaxation: Travel quarantine doubles

According to Chennai Corporation data, as many as 12,763 persons, who had returned to the city, have been put under the home quarantine on Sunday alone. On August 18, the first day of e-pass relaxation, 11,142 persons were put under home quarantine under travel quarantine category.

Interestingly, the civic body had quarantined only 6,103 persons, who returned on August 17, which is only half of the daily reported travel quarantine after the relaxation. Overall, 1.24 lakh persons have been under active travel quarantine for the past 14 days till August 23.

Presently, categories such as contacts of positive persons and travel quarantine contribute to more than half the number of home quarantined persons.

“HQIMS has crossed the 20-lakh mark and travel quarantine also has significantly increased due to the free pass system. In a week, we would be crossing 25-lakh mark,” G Prakash, Chennai Corporation Commissioner, said.

As per the records, the civic body quarantined more than 21 lakh persons under the system, of which 3.04 lakh persons are quarantined for travelling. Up to August 16, since the inception of HQIMS, 2.25 lakh persons were put under travel quarantine. As per the usual practice, the civic body would impose a home quarantine for 14 days for contacts and family members of the infected persons. However, persons, who are quarantined after giving samples for testing, would be released once the test results confirm negative for the infection.

“On average, we are issuing 12,000 to 13,000 e-passes every day. The details of the persons entering the city will be saved in our database once they provide Aadhar details. We use the details to trace and quarantine them,” an official said.