Seven migrants who returned to Uttar Pradesh from Maharashtra earlier this week have tested positive for the novel coronavirus. The report comes a day after the Centre relaxed the lockdown measures to facilitate the return of labourers, students and other stranded migrants to their home states. The labourers in eastern UP's Basti district, about 260 km from state capital Lucknow, were quarantined at a college after their return earlier this week; they have now been shifted to a local hospital. The quarantine centre is being sanitized. All those who came in contact with these patients are being traced and isolated, according to the officials concerned.
A number of migrants were stranded across the country after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a nationwide shutdown on March 25 to check the spread of COVID-19, which has infected 37,000 people so far, killed at least 1,200. Uttar Pradesh, which was one of the first states to run special buses to bring back migrants, nearly 2,300 people have so far tested positive for coronavirus; at least 42 have died.Five weeks after the shutdown began, the central government on Wednesday gave a clearance for the movement of stranded labourers, students and tourists.