Vikramaditya
Port Blair, Jan 28: When there was a surge in COVID-19 cases in Andaman and Nicobar Islands, the local Administration had taken a number of strict and commendable measures to contain the spread of virus, which yielded good results. Because of these measures today there are only a few cases of COVID-19 in Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
Considering the improvement in the situation and also considering the recent guidelines for Surveillance, Containment and Caution of COVID-19 issued by the Ministry of Home Affairs, this is high time to stop Rapid Antigen Test for Inter-island and ATR passengers, which was made mandatory earlier.
The most important point to be noted, in this regard is that since 1st, January 2021 not a single case of COVID-19 has been detected at Ferrargunj RAT Covid-19 testing site. It is learnt that even in RAT for inter island sectors no such COVID-19 cases have been detected since Jan 01,2021.
As the Administration has made it mandatory to bring COVID-19 negative test certificate for all incoming passengers, coming from Mainland, situation has improved in these remote Islands since Dec 26, 2020.
It seems that now there is no need to conduct Rapid Antigen Test to all passengers of Inter-Island and ATR, which is not only a wastage of money and time of public but also wastage of manpower of Health and Revenue Departments.
Similarly there is also a need to restore normal shipping schedule for inter island and normal ATR schedule for North and Middle Andaman.
When contacted sources in Administration told that a proposal for stopping RAT has been send to competent authority for final approval and once the approval comes, it won’t be necessary to undergo RAT for ATR and other inter-island passengers.
