Air India staffer tests positive for Covid-19, office sealed for two days – india news

The office of national carrier Air India was sealed in Delhi on Tuesday after one of the staff members tested positive for coronavirus disease Covid-19.

“Airlines House has been sealed for Tuesday and Wednesday,” news agency PTI quoted an official as saying.

The official said that the employee was diagnosed with Covid-19 on May 7, through the RT-PCR test, and tested positive on Monday evening.

The employee first had fever which subsided with the help of medicines but then the staffer started having soar throat and respiratory symptoms. He got himself tested on Sunday and was sent to Ram Manohar Lohia (RML) hospital in Delhi after it.

“However, the doctors at RML prescribed him medicines and advised him to watch for any change of condition and recommended home quarantine,” the official said.

Five Air India pilots had earlier tested positive for Covid-19. But in the second round of testing, their results came negative.

The results of second round of tests came on Monday evening.

The Mumbai-based pilots had operated cargo flights to China before April 20 and had been in home isolation for 14 days.

However, two other employees – a technician and a tug driver – of an Air India subsidiary again tested positive. “The airline is in touch with the employees,” said an official.

As part of the government’s ‘Vande Bharat’ mission to repatriate stranded Indian nationals from different countries during the Covid-19 lockdown, Air India would operate 64 flights between May 7 and May 14. Around 15,000 stranded Indians are expected to come back from 12 countries through the mission.

India has been under a lockdown since March 25 to curb the spread of the virus, which has infected more than 70,000 people and killed around 2,290 people in the country till now.