Tamil Nadu has stepped up measures to check passengers arriving from Kerala by road, rail or air. At the Kerala-Tamil Nadu border, a heavy police force has been deployed with a Deputy Superintendent of Police manning each check-post. Tamil Nadu has announced that it would allow passengers from Kerala only if they have a negative RT-PCR certificate within 72 hours of the journey or have taken two doses of vaccine with the second dose taken 15 days prior to the journey.
At the check-posts in Walayar, Kalliakavilai and other border posts, huge queues are being witnessed to conduct mandatory checking of the certificates. If a passenger doesn't have the mandatory RT-PCR negative certificate, the individual would be subjected to an RT-PCR test at the check-post and will have to stay in home quarantine till the report comes. If found positive, the individual will be admitted to a first-line testing centre.
Sanjay Thomas, an IT professional from Palakkad who was travelling to Coimbatore for personal work, was stuck at the Walayar check-post for hours even though he had an RT-PCR negative certificate taken 72 hours within his journey. The techie said, "It is not that they did not allow me to cross the check-post, but the serpentine queue has made it impossible to cross without waiting for more than two hours."
Tamil Nadu Health Minister Ma Subramanian said, "The government has posted health department officials at all the railway stations where trains from Kerala arrive. The passengers will have to produce all the required documents failing which they will have to undergo RT-PCR tests." The minister had earlier paid a visit to the Chennai international airport along with Health Secretary J. Radhakrishnan to oversee the preparations.
Kerala is presently recording 20,000 Covid cases daily on an average with a test positivity rate of more than 13 per cent.
