Chennai: Even as the Tamilnadu government commenced its 13th mega Covid-19 vaccination drive this morning, increased curbs have been put in place to those who are yet to get jabs.
Individual government establishments in the State have started enforcing norms to restrict unvaccinated people from visiting public places. Even as it has not been declared as a blanket law, authorities have taken the call on their own.
For instance, Krishnagiri district collector V Jaya Chandra Bhanu Reddy issued an order to authorities concerned not to allow unvaccinated people in public places, including tea shops, grocery, vegetable shops, wedding functions, petrol pumps and hotels. Reddy said about 10 lakh people in the district had been vaccinated and four lakh were not.
Vellore and Dindigul Municipal Corporations have issued a directive not to allow unvaccinated people in public places with a long list of places and categories where the directive was to be implemented.
According to revised guidelines, RT-PCR test has been made mandatory for passengers who arrive at any of the airports in the state from countries identified as ‘at risk’ by the central government. Such travellers will remain at the respective airport till their RT-PCR test result comes negative, according to S Dharmaraj, Director at Tiruchirappalli International Airport.
A day after two cases of the new Omicron Covid-19 variant were detected in India, two international passengers, one each from the UK and Singapore tested positive for coronavirus in Tamilnadu’s capital city Chennai, informed State Health Minister Ma Subramanian on Friday.
‘Their samples will be genome sequenced at the State Public Health Laboratory, Chennai, and for double confirmation, they will be send to InStem, Bangalore. Only after genome sequencing will we know if the travellers were infected with the Omicron variant. It will take a week to get the results,’ said Subramanian.