Mamata warns of forced quarantine for foreign returnees

Kolkata, March 20 (SocialNews.XYZ) Amid reports of people returning from abroad, including the two confirmed coronavirus-afflicted in the state defying directives to remain in self-isolation, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Friday warned that the government would put under forced quarantine those not heeding its advices.

"Those returning from abroad will have to go into self isolation. If they don't, then they will be out in forced quarantine," Banerjee told media persons at the state secretariat Nabanna.

After a huge uproar over the state's first confirmed coronavirus patient -- the teenage son of a senior bureaucrat -- roaming the streets and visiting a number of places, despite repeated request from health authorities to get himself hospitalised and tested after returning from United Kingdom, there are now reports that the second afflicted youth also showed similar defiance.

The 22-year-old son of a businessman, who returned from UK on March 13, visited various points of the city, and even sat at his father's sanitary fittinig outlets for three days. On Friday, almost all the sanitary fitting shops in South Kolkata's Rashbehari avenue, that houses one of the outlets of the youth's father, were shut.

Expressing dismay over the Central government decision to allow international flights to land till March 22, Banerjee demanded the flights be stopped forthwith.

Banerjee alleged she was not getting any assistance from the Centre in combating the disease.

She also announced the police would take stern action against hoarders.

Source: IANS