Assam withdraws relaxation given to fully vaccinated

Guwahati, Jul 18 (PTI): The Assam government has withdrawn the relaxation given to the fully vaccinated people entering the state from mandatory COVID-19 test and issued a fresh order saying all travellers have to undergo health checkup on entry, an official said on Sunday.
The decision has been taken after it was found that 5 per cent of the new COVID-19 positive cases in the state in the last few days were among fully vaccinated people, an official said.
The state government on July 15 had announced that air and train passengers receiving both doses of COVID-19 vaccine will be exempted from the mandatory testing on arrival.
The latest notification, issued by the Health and Family Welfare department, has said that “COVID positivity is observed even in some of the person(s) who have received two doses of vaccination in a few instances,” and hence, the earlier given exemption was withdrawn. “Some people who have got both the doses of COVID-19 vaccine are getting infected. While the symptoms in them may not be severe, they run the risk of being carriers,” Dr Lakshmanan S, director, National Health Mission (NHM), Assam, told PTI.
He informed that among the new COVID-19 cases detected in the last couple of months, approximately five per cent are people who were fully vaccinated.
A survey carried out by ICMR in Dibrugarh district in May and June had found 5.3 per cent of the sample size who tested positive for COVID-19 had received both doses of the vaccine.
Among those who had received the first dose only, the positivity rate was 12.4 per cent.
Altogether 6,224 people were surveyed, out of which 772 had taken first dose, 332 second dose and 5,120 had not taken the vaccine at all.
The persons who had received both doses and yet tested positive for the virus had displayed ‘very mild symptoms and were in home isolation’, the survey had found.
Dibrugarh district has reported second highest number of new cases and deaths in the second wave in the state so far.
Assam’s decision to withdraw the exemption comes when in many other parts of the country, including Kerala and Mumbai, exemption for fully vaccinated domestic travellers from carrying an RT-PCR negative report for COVID-19 has been announced.