Airlines will have to ensure the availability of a coronavirus negative test report before allowing the passengers to board the flight. All the passengers arriving from the UK would be mandatorily subjected to self-paid RT-PCR tests on their arrival at the Indian airports, the government stated in the SOPs.

The SOPs shall be valid till January 30 (23:59 hrs) or further orders whichever is earlier. All international travellers as described in the scope above will be required to declare as per existing procedure, their travel history (of past 14 days) and fill up the Self Declaration Form to be screened for coronavirus.

All the passengers coming from the UK during the intervening period from January 8 to January 30 would be required to submit a self-declaration form on the online portal(newdelhiairport.in) at least 72 hours before the scheduled travel.

All the passengers arriving from the UK would have to submit a negative RT-PCR test report
for which test should have been conducted within 72 hours prior to undertaking the journey.

The airlines have been directed to ensure the availability of negative test report before allowing the passengers to board the flights.

“All the passengers arriving from the UK in all international flights would be mandatorily subjected to self-paid RT-PCR tests on arrival at the Indian airports concerned,” the government stated in the SOPs. The Centre has also directed the states and UTs to set up help desks at airports to facilitate the implementation of the procedure.

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Confirming this, the Health Ministry said that apart from the six positive cases found on December 29, these cases have been reported from person in Delhi and Bengaluru. The persons have been isolated, said the Ministry.

The Indian government has become alert after the new fast-spreading Covid strain was discovered in the UK.The Ministry is also planning to extend the ban on flights from the UK.

It also stepped up testing in airports. But testing people who have specifically returned from the UK may not be enough as the new Covid strain has also spread in many other countries like United States, Denmark, the Netherlands, Australia, Italy and Sweden.

The health Ministry in India has now decided to test five percent of all passengers for the new Covid-19 variant.

“This particular virus strain may have its own run- it has travelled to many countries – so we have to be very careful. Initially, it is easy to suppress the spread of the virus because the chain of transmission is smaller,” Dr VK Paul, a member of the Niti Aayog, said.

The new SARS –CoV-2 is believed to be 70 percent more transmissible than the older strain but less lethal, according to scientists. Experts said that people need to take same precautions for the new virus strain and added that the vaccines currently in development will be effective against the new strain as well.

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