Coronavirus: Assam government reduces quarantine period for returnees to 10 days

Guwahati: The Assam government has decided to reduce the quarantine period for passengers arriving from outside the state to 10 days from the existing span of two weeks, officials said on Wednesday.

The period will be inclusive of the days spent in an institutional, hotel or home quarantine, an order issued by the Health and Family Welfare Department said.

"If a passenger spends an initial two days in a hotel or institutional quarantine, then he/she will spend the remaining eight days in-home quarantine.

Similarly, if any passenger directly proceeds for home quarantine, then he/she shall spend 10 days in-home quarantine," it said.

However, if the RT-PCR test results of such passengers turn out positive, steps will be taken as per standard procedure, the department said.

In case of patients discharged after they test negative, there shall be a mandatory seven-day home quarantine with active surveillance by health workers, An order issued by the department last week had said due to the evolving situation, the period of home quarantine shall be reduced from 14 to seven days.

The state government also needs to optimally utilise the resources at its disposal for core activities of testing and treatment of COVID-19, the order stated.

"Therefore, it has been decided that essential items worth Rs 2,000 for quarantined families will from now be provided only to families of Below Poverty Line (BPL) category," the order had stated.

Deputy Commissioners, however, are authorised to extend this benefit to other families if required to mitigate hardship, it added.