Vande Bharat mission: First repatriation flight to M'luru lands with 176 passengers

Mangaluru: The first repatriation flight from Dubai to the city as part of Vande Bharat’s mission landed at the Mangaluru International Airport (MIA) on Tuesday, May 12 at 10.10 pm.

The flight with 176 passengers, included five children and two infants, 38 pregnant women, and 12 medical emergency cases, landed at the airport. All the passengers had stranded in the UAE due to the suspension of flights since March 23 in order to stop the spread of coronavirus.

Money transfer, SIM distribution, ration kit distribution, and food arrangement was done for the passengers at the airport by the officials.

The district administration had made arrangements for receiving the passengers, who were provided with sanitizers and masks.

They were advised to maintain social distancing as per the health protocol.

All the foreign returnees were screened as per the standard operating procedure to ensure that they were asymptomatic.

The passengers were taken to their chosen place of accommodation in KSRTC buses.

They will be undergoing a 14-day quarantine in the places, which will be monitored by doctors assigned by the health department.

More than 17 hotels and 12 hostels have been arranged for the accommodation of the returnees.

Passengers were also asked to download the mandatory ‘Aroygya Sethu’ app for contact tracing.

Rahul Shinde IAS who is in charge of arranging quarantine facilities, airport director V V Rao and district health officer Ramachandra Bairy were present at the airport.