Govt bulletin on Covid check at city’s airport misleading

Govt bulletin on Covid check at city’s airport misleading

Data Creates Illusion That All Passengers Are Tested

Ayyappan.V@timesgroup.com

Chennai:29.08.2020

The city airport does not test all arriving domestic passengers for Covid-19 infection, but the data in daily health bulletin released by the health department gives an impression that it does.

The bulletin lists air passengers tested positive under two categories — domestic air passengers tested positive daily without specifying the airport and total domestic passengers tested positive so far.

This gives an impression that all domestic passengers arriving are being tested at Chennai airport while only thermal scanning is done.

The column “Passengers returned from other states by domestic airport tested positive today” on page two of Sunday’s bulletin says the number of passengers and place of origin as Karnataka 13, Delhi nine, Telangana eight, Maharashtra four, and Gujarat, Kerala, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh ,and West Bengal one each. However, there is no breakup of the airports these passengers landed at.

On the bulletin’s page 15, a table says 80,903 passengers had arrived by domestic flights from May 26 to June 27 in Tamil Nadu and 306 have tested positive. Here too there is no airportwise break-up. On the same page, a table for “air surveillance up to June 27 (domestic flights) says 895flights brought 53,709 passengers and 127 had tested positive at Chennai airport. But there is no mention of whether all 53,709 passengers have been tested or not.

An official at the Covid-19 control room which prepares the bulletin said “the numbers shown on page two are gathered from all airports and show the origin of passengers, but there is no move as yet to mention which airport they have landed in Tamil Nadu.”

The state government is yet to start testing all passengers arriving at Chennai airport; they are screened and only those with symptoms are tested. An airline official said, “People get a wrong impression looking at the bulletin that all are being tested. Many call up the airport and airline counters and ask whether samples will be taken from them on arrival.”