Indian government issues SOP for passengers from UK

Days after announcing the partial resumption of flights from January 8, the Indian government on Saturday issued Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for passengers who will be arriving from the United Kingdom amid the concerns over the new Covid-19 strain. Apart from a limited number of flights, India has made negative Covid test reports mandatory for all the passengers from the UK.

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.