At least five COVID-positive passengers from the United
Kingdom went missing after landing at the Delhi airport on Tuesday. While three
of them were traced in Delhi, one managed to set foot in Andhra Pradesh and the
other reached Ludhiana, the Indian Express reported.

The outlet quoted sources as saying that amongst the
people who tested positive was a 46-year-old man from Amritsar’s Pandori
village who managed to slip out of the Delhi airport. He reached Ludhiana and he
checked himself into a private hospital there. The man was traced and taken
back to Delhi on Wednesday morning.

“He is from Amritsar but came to Ludhiana as his nephew
works in a hospital, and he decided to get admitted here. Around 4.30 pm
Tuesday, we received a call from the authorities in Delhi that a man from
Punjab had slipped out… As per the protocol, we started looking for him. Around
5.30 pm, he reached Fortis Hospital with his wife, who had accompanied him from
the UK. He was isolated and we also isolated two of his closest contacts — his
wife and nephew,” Ludhiana Additional Deputy Commissioner, Sandeep Kumar, told
The Indian Express.

“However, on Tuesday night, we again received a call from
the office of Delhi’s special secretary (health), asking us to shift back the
patient to Delhi immediately. It was not advisable to do so as the patient was
already positive. We refused to shift him late at night,” he said, adding that
the Ludhiana administration eventually agreed to move the patient to Delhi but
were “not in favor of it” as “it could lead to spread of the infection.”

“The patient should have been put under institutional
quarantine in Delhi itself. We are in the process of tracing his other contacts
too,” the official said.

Meanwhile, the other patient, who managed to reach Andhra
Pradesh, was traced on Wednesday afternoon after which the process to bring him back to Delhi was started.

The other
three patients were traced in Delhi and admitted to Lok Nayak hospital.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday, India suspended flights from and to the United Kingdom until
December 31 after a new and a more infectious strain of coronavirus was
found in the UK.