HYDERABAD: A man who tested positive for the Covid-19 virus on Friday after returning home from UK said that many students had taken paracetamol before landing in Hyderabad, to lower their body temperature and escape checks at the airport, reports Uttara Varma Akhil Ennamsetty , a 24-year-old Warangal-based lawyer, who was on a flight from London that landed in Mumbai on Wednesday, is currently in the isolation ward of Gandhi hospital.Ennamsetty, a student of LLM in human rights law at the University of Edinburg, took a connecting domestic flight to the city with only 10 other passengers, who are also in quarantine now.“Most of my copassengers in the flight from Heathrow consisted of students from various universities in the UK. They took paracetamol an hour before landing, to lower their body temperature and not get ‘caught’ in the thermal screening being done at the Indian airports,” said Ennamsetty in a social media post.Ennamsetty warned health authorities that foreign returnees who masked their actual body temperature and symptoms were staying with their parents and was putting everyone else at great health risk.His story underscores how scores of people across India are taking medicines to lower their body temperature and escaping thermal checks to risk their family, neighbours and friends. Some experts have said if undetected, it would lead to a huge spike in Coronavirus numbers.Telangana has reported 18 cases of Covid-19 so far, with eight positive cases alone on Wednesday.“Early this morning I have been (sic) tested positive for Covid-19. I am admitted to the isolation ward at Gandhi Hospital. My chain of contact confirms that no one else needs to be isolated in relation to my case as I have taken all precautions to not meet anyone post my arrival in India from the UK,” said Ennamsetty through a post on facebook.A student of LLM in human rights law at the University of Edinburgh, Ennamsetty highlighted how students had “lied in the self-declaration forms given on the flight about the symptoms in order to escape getting quarantined upon arrival. These are the people who are now staying with their families and friends around you, maybe on the very next door (sic).”Speaking to TOI, Ennamsetty, said he knew about 10 people who took paracetamol on the flight.While appreciating the steps being taken at airports, especially in Hyderabad, he said it was not fool-proof, since they were relying only on thermal screening and he himself was largely asymptomatic.“I did not have a fever, just a mild sore throat which also is not there today. To be on the safe side, I got myself tested and found I was Covid-19 positive,” he said.Ennamsetty says that many in the UK may have been exposed to the virus because of the earlier ‘herd immunity’ approach that they were following. “UK’s approach towards controlling this pandemic has been worrying. They wanted most of the population to get infected so as to gain immunity. Though this has a scientific base, it doesn’t seem very promising at this hour of a public emergency.”The UK has since announced that it would drop the policy, but many are wary about the high exposure people have already had.Ennamsetty has this year received backing from Clinton Global Initiative University (CGI U 2020) to fund his dream of the first-ever ‘Centre for Rights Activism’ in Telangana through which he hopes to fight for victims of human right abuses.“This is a global public health emergency and we all have to be together in this fight. Please follow all the precautions given out by public authorities. It’s no longer an easy game,” Ennamsetty added.