The Bengal government has decided to send all Covid-19 positive international passengers arriving at the Calcutta Airport to separate isolation facilities in an effort to prevent the spread of the omicron variant.

“International travellers, who are tested positive for Covid-19 by RT-PCR at the airport on arrival in India, are not allowed to move to the respective destination. These passengers must be put in separate isolation in any of the health facilities identified for this purpose,” said a notification issued by the state health department on Tuesday.

The directive also mentioned that the same procedure had to be followed for any passenger detected with Covid on a later date. The state government has also laid down a specific isolation strategy for the passengers detected with Covid on arrival.

According to the strategy, the authorities of the isolation centres should send swab samples of the patients to the School of Tropical Medicine for genome sequencing. Besides, the separate isolation facilities for the positive travellers should not entertain other Covid patients.

The facility should have toilets exclusively for the positive international passengers so that they don’t come into contact with other Covid patients.

All caregivers should enter the isolation facility wearing PPE and follow stringent infection control protocol to protect themselves.

In case the patients need to be taken out for diagnostic procedure, the stay should be as minimum as possible and it has to be ensured that they don’t mingle with others.

In case a patient is found to have the omicron variant, he or she must not be released from the facility until two successive negative Covid-19 RT-PCR (in a gap of 48 hours) results are received.

The patients without the omicron strain can be discharged according to the discretion of the physician treating them.

Sources said the steps were initiated to ensure that the omicron variant didn’t spread rapidly in the state. “We are trying to ensure that omicron cases don’t spread rapidly in Bengal at a time when the state is slowly returning to normalcy in many sectors,” said an official.