CHENNAI, DEC 24 : In line with the Union government’s advisory following spike in cases, random COVID tests of two per cent International passengers coming from highly-infected countries like China and Japan, began at the International airports in Tamil Nadu, including the Chennai airport, on Saturday.

The random tests of international passengers were being tested due to the new variant of COVID-19, BF.7, a sub-lineage of BA.5 variant of Omicron have seen a surge in some countries.

Meanwhile, Tamil Nadu Health Minister Ma.Subramanian inspected the testing facilities at the Anna International airport here today.

Since the Covid cases are massively increasing in some Asian and other countries, the Union government ordered RT-PCR tests for random passengers arriving in India from these countries.

The Health Department has set up special counters in airports to test the passengers who are arriving from the USA, China, Hong Kong, Japan, and South Korea.

However, since most of the passengers are arriving on different connecting flights, the health department is monitoring all the passengers and selecting the two per cent of passengers randomly and an RT-PCR test is being conducted for them.

Children below 12 years will not be tested. In the event of any children have symptoms a fever or cold, they will be subjected to RT-PCR tests.

The passengers, whose samples were tested should wait till the test results are out before exiting the airport.

If any of the the passenger tested positive for Covid, they would be taken to the hospital for admission or will home quarantined with due monitoring by the health department officials.

Subramanian, who inspected the testing facilities at the Chennai International Airport, said as per the directions of the Union Government, random testing of two percent of international passengers upon arrival commence at the airports in Trichy, Coimbatore, Madurai and Chennai.

“At least 37 international passengers coming from Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Dubai, Doha and Sri Lanka have been tested so far at the Chennai International airport and none of them reported any symptoms so far, ” the Minister said.

The Health Minister along with the health secretary and the Director of Public Health and Preventive Medicine also inspected the fever screening system at the airport that checks the temperature of all the passengers and if anyone is found to have symptoms of Covid-19, they will be treated as per the protocol.

“If there are any positive cases, they will be immediately sent for genomic sequencing at the State Public Health Laboratory to identify the type of variant, ” he said.

The Minister said that there are 1.15 lakh beds available for patients in the government hospitals in Tamil Nadu, of which 72,000 beds are ready for Covid-19 patients.

The drugs and medicines required for the treatment of Covid-19 is available in the warehouses in adequate amount as the stock is kept ready for next three months.

The oxygen concentrators, generators and oxygen cylinders are also available in all the government hospitals in adequate numbers, so there is no need to fear over management of cases of Covid -19.

The Minister said everal countries including the USA, China, Japan, and South Korea are seeing significant spike in cases.

He said no COVID deaths were repored in Tamil Nadu in the last six months and only single digit cases were reported in the State for the last ten days.

Hence there was no need for the people to panic, Subramanian added. During a meeting with the Union Health Ministry on Friday, the availability of beds, oxygen and medicines and the status of the infection in the State has been communicated.

“We will request the Centre to provide more number of vaccines so that those who are not vaccinated, can be given their does. We will also request the nasal vaccine and if provided, we are ready to administer it to the eligible ones”, he said.(UNI)