People travelling to India from abroad on Saturday complained of crowded waiting areas inside the Indira Gandhi International Airport in Delhi where those travelling from different countries had to wait together for as long as 11 hours before they could leave the airport.
People said there could be COVID-19 transmissions under such conditions and that there was “chaos” at the airport.
“My daughter landed at 2.45 a.m. from Canada and she is still inside the airport. She told me that it is overcrowded inside and there are people from affected countries, such as England and Dubai, waiting along with them. This defeats the purpose of isolation,” a person who was waiting for his 20-year-old daughter at the airport here told The Hindu at 1.45 p.m.
He said that his daughter was waiting at the airport along with some 30 other students from her university in Canada.
“As per the latest govt advisory, all international arriving passengers have to undergo compulsory health screening and quarantine procedure by Airport Health Organisation [APHO]. This may lead to a longer wait time at T3 international arrival. We continue to support all our stakeholders to minimize inconvenience to the passengers [sic.],” Delhi International Airport Limited said in a tweet.
“I landed the airport at 11.30 last night [Friday] from San Francisco and was released from the airport only around 10.30 a.m. today [Saturday],” Neha Thapa, 36, a senior director of technology, who lives in Gurugram said.
“I had cancelled my flight via Dubai as it was an infected country and booked a direct flight to Delhi. But there were about 2,000 people from Thailand, South Korea, Middle East and all around the world in a single large hall here,” she said.
“It is pretty dangerous. If one person has the disease, then others will get it too. It is a perfect petri dish for any spreading. I heard that the same thing happened two or three days back,” she added. Ms. Thapa said the crowd management became a “huge problem” in the intervening night of Friday and Saturday.
“The authorities were trying really hard, but there were a lot of people. People got really angry and started shouting and started thumping at the immigration counter,” she said, adding: “Overall, it was very painful.”
There was no social distancing at the airport, she pointed out. “I don’t think the police understand it. At one point, they were asking us to come closer for some announcement,” she said.
People coming from abroad have to undergo two different medical checks at the airport.
The first test is done by the airport authorities for visible symptoms, where after an initial thermal screening, symptomatic passengers are isolated and moved to designated hospitals. Others move to the second screening point, where they are either advised home quarantine or sent to a government-run quarantine facility.
“International flights are banned from tomorrow [Sunday] and therefore we saw a large number of poeple at the airport today [Saturday],” an airport official said while commenting on the delay.
