The Bengal chief minister has said mandatory institutional quarantine for returnees from Covid-19 hotspot states of Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Delhi and Madhya Pradesh will be brought down from two weeks to seven days.

“The returnees would stay seven days at the institutional quarantine centres. We would conduct test after seven days. Those who would be tested negative would go home. Proper treatment would be made available for those who would be tested positive,” Mamata Banerjee said at Nabanna on Wednesday.

The Bengal government had earlier made it mandatory for returnees from Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Delhi and Madhya Pradesh to spend 14 days at institutional quarantine centres as those states had recorded huge number of novel coronavirus cases.

So far, the chief minister said, nearly 11 lakh migrant labourers have come back to Bengal and 30,000 more people are expected to return in the next few days.

“The total number of trains (to bring back migrants) has increased to 255 from 235,” said Mamata.

A senior official said the decision to conduct swab tests of the returnees after seven days was a pragmatic one as a person would not test negative for the novel coronavirus after five days of infection if he or she remained asymptomatic.

“Keeping migrants who are travelling from faraway states at quarantine centres for 14 days and waiting to see if they develop symptoms is not practical as lakhs of people are coming in. Cutting down the quarantine period would ease the burden on the state,” said the official.

Sources said the state government had changed its previous decision as migrant returnees in many districts were complaining of several problems at school buildings which had been turned into quarantine centres almost overnight.

“They were complaining of paucity of food and water. There were some basic problems like toilet facilities too. In such a situation, keeping them quarantined for two weeks is a bit inhuman,” said a source.

Initially, the state government had estimated that about 2 lakh returnees would have to be kept at the schools for two weeks. But an official said the number was increasing almost every day.

“District magistrates are reporting to Nabanna that villagers are protesting the entry of migrants from even non-Covid-19 hotspot states. The authorities are being forced to send those migrants to institutional quarantine centres. It is an additional burden on the district authorities which are managing the situation with limited resources,” said a senior official.

Another official said cutting down the quarantine period to seven days had been taken after it had been realised that many more migrants were coming back compared to what had been estimated initially.

“We had an estimate that nearly 6 to 7 lakh people would come back. But in reality, we saw that the number of returnees would touch 11 lakh figure. We can handle the situation only by cutting down the quarantine period,” said a senior bureaucrat.