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HYDERABAD: A man who is suspected to have Covid-19 virus after returning home from London has said that many students had taken paracetamol before landing in Hyderabad to lower their body temperature and escape checks at the airport.

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. He took a connecting domestic flight to the city with only 10 other passengers, who are also on quarantine now.

"The majority of my flight from London Heathrow consisted of students studying at various universities in the UK. These are the people who took paracetamol dose an hour before landing to lower body temperature and not get caught in the thermal screening being done at the Indian airports," said Ennamsetty in a social media post. Speaking to TOI, Ennamsetty said he knew about 10 people who took paracetamol on the flight.

His story underscores how many could have slipped passed the screening and how it could lead to a spike in Covid-19 cases if any among them turns positive. Telangana has reported 19 cases of Covid-19 so far.

‘Students lied about symptoms to escape getting quarantined’

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,” Ennamsetty said in his post.

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)”.

While appreciating the steps being taken at airports, 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 fever, just a mild sore throat which also is not there today,” 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. The UK has since announced that it would drop the policy, but many are wary about the high exposure people have already had.

“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,” said Ennamsetty, who 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.

