As a result of the Tamil Nadu registers the highest number of COVID 19 cases for a few days and tightened lockdown, the Kerala government has started phone surveillance on Malayalis staying back in the state.
This comes at a time when a large number of Malayalis, though a major chunk of them have already returned home, continue to stay back in Chennai as part of various purposes including education, job and business. A Malayali stay in Ramapuram area says he has got at least a couple of phone calls in a week from the Kerala government –one from the Intelligence Bureau and other from the District Medical Office- asking to know the travel plans to Kerala and whereabouts.
The officials said that they were trying to get in touch with people who travelled or stayed at Chennai to know whether they had immediate plans to travel to Kerala. ‘We want also to ensure though the phone calls that the Malayalis in Chennai have not travelled to Kerala without informing the authorities. If anybody wants to travel to Kerala now we want to know about their requirement of quarantine facilities so that we could arrange facilities accordingly’, the Health department official said.
Another Malayali, who stays in the town, said that the Kerala government continues to contact the people who registered to go home. But many of them have been asked to put the travel plans on hold by the local administration authorities as the number of cases witnesses a steady increase for several days now’, he said. According to Kerala government data, at least 98 people travelled to Kerala from Tamil Nadu tested positive in the last two weeks.
The Thiruvananthapuram city police, the other day, had registered a case against a Covid-19 positive patient for hiding details about his infection after returning to Kerala from Tamil Nadu.
