Woman Sneaks In COVID-Positive 4-Year-Old Daughter On Flight To New Zealand, Faces Charges

Police have booked a 32-year-old woman who sneaked in her COVID-positive daughter into a flight to New Zealand. The four-year-old girl tested positive on Dec. 23, and the duo flew to New Zealand the same night, said reports.

Hiralben Dungrani, hailing from India, faces multiple charges after taking a flight from her home state of Gujarat to Auckland, reported The Indian Express.

Police said the incident came to light on Dec. 24 morning when local authorities came to Dungrani's residence for inspection after learning about the positive test.

"After the child tested positive for coronavirus on Dec. 23 morning, the municipal corporation asked her mother Dungrani to keep her in quarantine for 14 days. However, when we arrived at her residence on Dec. 24 morning, the patient was not found," medical officer Dr. Shefali Patel told the news outlet.

The inspection squad was informed by Dungrani's father that both the mother and the child flew to New Zealand on Dec. 23 night to join her husband.

She faces charges, including malignant acts likely to spread infection of the disease, and disobedience to order given by public servants. Dungrani has also been booked under the Epidemic Diseases Act for disobeying an order, the report added.

The authorities are also planning to take up the matter with the authorities in New Zealand, Dr. Patel added.

Dungrani's native state of Gujarat is seeing a rapid surge in COVID numbers, with 548 new cases being recorded as of Wednesday. Reports said this is the highest since June 9, when the country battled a devastating wave of COVID-19. The Ahmedabad district recorded an over-five-fold jump in daily infections during the last four days, the report added.

A similar incident was reported last month in India when a family who arrived from the U.S. for vacation boarded a flight back despite their two children testing COVID positive. The four-member family got a mandatory test at a private lab for COVID-19 in the city of Jaipur but the results came back positive for the children. However, before the local authorities could get in touch with the family, they boarded an airplane to the U.S. The officials added that despite a positive test, the children did not show any symptoms.