3 new COVID-19 cases reported, total count reaches 34

New Delhi: Three more cases of Coronavirus have been found to be positive on Saturday — two in Ladakh and 1 in Tamil Nadu — taking the total count in India to 34.

According to Health Ministry's official communiqué, two from Ladakh with travel history to Iran and one from Tamil Nadu with travel history to Oman were confirmed positive on Saturday. However, the statement released by Health Ministry's chief publicity officer Manisha Verma maintained that all the cases are stable and doing well.

As the "suspected" cases of Coronavirus are increasing across the country, 52 laboratories have been made functional for testing samples while 57 labs have been designated for helping in sample collection for COVID-19 to enhance capacity for diagnosis and detection of the disease.

Passengers from 12 countries will be segregated from other passengers till the conveyer belt areas at airports, an official said on Saturday, amid rising concerns over infections.

Passengers from arriving from China, South Korea, Japan, Italy, Iran, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Nepal and Indonesia would be segregated from other arriving passengers, an Airports Authority of India (AAI) spokesperson said.

According to him, the passengers from the 12 countries would not be allowed to mix with other passengers during "health screening, immigration and conveyer belt areas".

On Saturday, Civil Aviation Secretary Pradeep Singh Kharola along with AAI Chairman Arvind Singh, DGCA chief Arun Kumar and others reviewed the status of screening activities done at airports to check for Coronavirus infections.

After reviewing the situation on COVID 19 and action taken so far by various ministries, Prime Minister Narendra Modi complimented all departments for the work taken up so far. He also mentioned that India has to be prepared in its response as per the evolving scenario and all departments should work in convergence for creating awareness in community about the disease and the precautions to be taken.

Meanwhile, after the Department of Telecom (DoT) had asked operators to put Coronavirus awareness messages in place of ringing tones, all the telcos started playing the precautionary messages. However, the audio clip has not been made available on those numbers where subscribers are paying for caller tunes.

IndiGo has announced waiving of cancellation and rescheduling charges on flight bookings till March 31 due to the prevailing situation.