While few states in the country have already started bringing back their citizens who are stuck in different parts of the world, Andhra Pradesh COVID taskforce has on Saturday appealed the people stranded in other countries should be prepared as flights are being readied to bring them back to AP.
Speaking to media on Saturday, Andhra transportation department chief secretary Krishna Babu said “Over 30,000 people have registered to return back to the state and we are offering both paid and free quarantine centers with all facilities. As soon they arrive in AP, we will be conduct COVID tests and send them to respective quarantine centers or hospitals if needed.
External Affairs Ministry has accepted our request to tag people of East Godavari & North Costal districts to Vizag Intl airport, Nellore & Rayalaseema district people to Tirupathi airport, and the rest of the districts to Vijayawada airport. But, since we do not have landing facilities for white-bodied aircrafts from long distance like North America, South America, South East Asian nations, these flights will take landing at Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Chennai from where we are arranging hopping flights.”
Announcing that Harish Kumar and Babu Rao are nodal officers for Delhi and AP, he further said “The first flight coming from US will arrive in Hyderabad on 11 May. While symptomatic persons will be sent to the nearest COVID centre, the asymptomatic passengers will be hotel quarantined for two weeks and we are making necessary arrangements with minimal cost. After 2 weeks of quarantine, these ex-pats should also take up 14 more days of home quarantine.”
Until now, 11 passenger trains have left AP and 11868 migrant were ferried to their respective places. Also, government is set to arrange 14 more trains to other parts of India. While Jharkhand has allowed to send one train, Andhra is yet to receive an approval from Rajasthan and Bengal to send the trains to their states. The COVID taskforce chairman said that Andhra government is paying for train fares of all migrants besides giving Rs 500 to each person.
