Mumbai, Delhi airports on Ebola alert: 114 Indians from Liberia arrive today

The Mumbai and Delhi international airports have been placed on full alert, as 114 Indian nationals are returning from the Ebola-hit Liberia on Tuesday. Elaborate precautionary measures have been taken to screen these 114 people as they arrive at the airports. “As part of the tentative plan, the aircraft will be first taken to a remote bay and all passengers will be screened at the step-ladder exit after the arrival of flights at the Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport (CSIA),” the Mumbai International Airport Limited (MIAL) said in a statement. [caption id=“attachment_1681677” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Reuters[/caption] While passengers without any symptoms will be cleared and shifted to the terminal for immigration and customs clearance, those coming from Liberia with symptoms suggestive of Ebola, will be directly shifted to designated hospitals by ambulance from the bay, it said. According to MIAL, Ethiopian Airline, Emirates, Etihad, Qatar, Jet and South African Airways are flying these passengers to Mumbai. Some of these passengers will first arrive in Delhi and then come to Mumbai via domestic airlines, MIAL said. Mial also said the baggage of the flights need to be kept separate by the concerned airline in their custody, adding that a full disinfection of the flight would be carried out once all passengers were deboarded. Flights will be allowed to board passengers for the return journey only after thirty minutes of disinfection, it added. Meanwhile, in a big relief, the 32-year-old man who recently arrived from Lagos in Nigeria and was kept in isolation in a Mumbai hospital has tested negative for Ebola. He has recovered from the fever, say hospital authorities. The Ebola outbreak in West Africa has killed more than 1,200 people since it began in December, 2013, the World Health Organisation has said. With inputs from PTI