Flights from UK resume, nearly 256 passengers to arrive in India today

Flights between the United Kingdom and India, that have been suspended since the last week of December amid fears of new Covid-19 strain, is set to resume today, and over 250 passengers from the UK are expected to land in Delhi.

The 256 passengers will travel to Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport from London’s Heathrow Airport via an Air India flight, at 10.20 hours on Friday.

Over 40 countries had put travel restrictions to and from the UK, owing to the new coronavirus strain reported in Britain in December 2020. The UK government had said that the new coronavirus strain is 70 per cent more transmittable.

However, about the worries over the new virus strain, World Health Organization (WHO) scientists had said “there is no evidence to show that the mutant virus is deadlier”. “There’s zero evidence that there’s any increase in severity of Covid-19 from the latest strain,” WHO’s emergencies chief Dr Michael Ryan had said.

Meanwhile,India has recorded 18,139 fresh coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours, taking the country’s total case tally to 1,04,13,417. India has also recorded 234 deaths apart from the new coronavirus cases.

In the past 24 hours, a total of 20,539 discharges and 234 deaths were recorded, as per the Union Health Ministry’s latest update. India’s coronavirus death toll is now at 1,50,570.

With over 1.04 crore coronavirus cases in total, India now has 2,25,449 total active cases with 1,00,37,398 total recoveries.