The Civil Aviation department officials on Friday applauded Kerala for its perfect handling of the two aircrafts that came last night into two state airports, after evacuating Indians from  Abu Dhabi and Dubai  under the ‘Vande Bharat Mission’.

State’s Chief Secretary Tom Jose informed that “The secretary congratulated Kerala for its neat and clean handling of the two aircrafts. Everything went according to our plans and it has been appreciated also. I spoke to Air India CMD today and he said apart from the already announced two flights for the day, there might be another two more and it will be known during the day. Even though the schedules are there, there might be changes.”

The first flight landed at Kochi from Abu Dhabi with 177 passengers on Thursday around 10.05 pm. As per the accepted protocol all the pregnant ladies, four kids and those above 75 years were send to their homes for 14 day quarantine.

Rest all have been quarantined in their home towns. They were taken in state transport buses in state run corona care centres and will be there for a week, after which all those who are negative will be asked to remain in isolation at their homes for another week.

Out of the 177 passengers 5 of them were showing symptoms of fever and have been moved to the government hospital in Kochi. They are being monitored under close vigil.

While the second flight that landed on Thursday was at Kozhikode and it came from Dubai with 182 passengers, including five kids.

According to the original plan of scheme, Friday, the first flight from Bahrain with 177 passengers will land at Kochi around 11.30 pm and another one will come from Riyadh in Saudi Arabia with 162 passengers to the Kozhikode airport at 8.30 pm.

Under “Vande Bharat Mission” 64 ferry services are to be operated from May 7-13 and is billed as one of the biggest air evacuation missions by any country.

State Agriculture Minister VS Sunilkumar, who is overseeing the operations on Friday, told the media that this was done as a matter of abundant caution and all of them are fine, according to the latest medical reports.

The same protocols are being followed across all the four airports.

The first COVID-19 case in the country was reported from Kerala on January 30. A student, who was studying at Wuhan University in China and returned to his home state, had been confirmed of being infected with the virus.

According to the data released by Ministry of Health, currently the state has 503 positive cases of Coronavirus while 474 people have been discharged so far, and 4 people have died in the state due to this virus.