Covid-19: Rio de Janeiro begins testing passengers coming from India

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – On June 1, the Brazilian Health Regulatory Agency (ANVISA) and the Rio de Janeiro State Health Secretariat began monitoring, at the city’s airports, arriving passengers who have traveled through India.

The goal is to prevent the spread of the Indian variant of the novel coronavirus in the state, after confirmation of a man who traveled to that country and entered Rio infected with the new strain.

The monitoring will involve 24-hour surveillance and antigen tests to detect Covid-19 in passengers arriving at Tom Jobim/Galeão and Santos Dumont International Airports who have traveled through India.

If tested positive, these passengers will be isolated in a Rio hotel, where they will be monitored and will undergo RT-PCR testing. The samples will be forwarded for genomic sequencing to identify the coronavirus variant.

The man who tested positive for the Indian variant is a resident of Campos, in the north of the state, and is being monitored in Rio. The people who had contact with him and who arrived from India are also being monitored by the municipal and state authorities. According to the State Secretariat, there has been no other confirmed infection by the new strain so far.

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