Legal action likely against +ve patient

Kochi/Thiruvananthapuram: A UK national tested positive for coronavirus in Kerala on Sunday and was stopped along with 18 others of his tourist group at the Kochi airport from flying to Dubai after he allegedly jumped quarantine in the hill resort town of Munnar, officials said.

The foreigner who tested positive and his wife have been admitted to an isolation facility at a nearby government hospital while the 17 were sent to a hotel for quarantine after being offloaded from the flight, Kerala Agriculture Minister V S Sunil Kumar told reporters at the airport.

Another passenger, a Keralite also booked on the Emirates flight scheduled for departure at 9.20 am, voluntarily opted not to travel and has been advised home quarantine, officials said. The flight carrying 270 passengers left for Dubai at 12.47 pm after the 20 passengers were offloaded, airport spokesman said.

With the UK national testing positive, the total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases under treatment in Kerala has risen to 20 and over 300 under are in isolation wards of various hospitals.

The district administration is likely to take legal action against the suspected coronavirus woman patient who fled from Bengaluru and reached Agra.

"It was an unfortunate incident. Since her father is a Railway employee, I will request the Divisional Railway Manager (Agra) to take appropriate disciplinary actions against her father for giving wrong information and lying with the team," informed Prabhu Narayan Singh, District Magistrate Agra.

"We are thinking of taking legal action against the woman and her family. A message should be sent out, what if another 10 families get affected because of them?" he added.

A Bengaluru-based techie was recently tested positive for coronavirus after his wife and he returned from Italy.

Primary schools, malls have been closed in Tamil Nadu till March 31.

The Mumbai Police on Sunday invoked section 144 of the CrPC to prohibit tour operators from conducting any kind of group tours to foreign or domestic destinations till March 31, an official said.

To contain the spread of virus, film bodies in India including Federation of Western Indian Cine Employees (FWICE) and Indian Film & Television Directors' Association (IFTDA) decided to put shootings of films, TV shows and web series on hold from March 19 to March 31.

The meeting was also attended by the representatives of Indian Motion Pictures Producers' Association (IMPPA), Western India Film Producers' Association (WIFPA) and Indian Film and TV Producers Council (IFTPC).

"Important bodies of film and entertainment industry met on Sunday to deal with the issue of coronavirus. After a lot of discussion, we came to this conclusion that from this coming Thursday, all shootings will stop till March 31.

After that, we will take a call," Ashoke Pandit, president of IFTDA, told reporters here.