Karnataka has made Covid tests mandatory for passengers arriving from Denmark and the Netherlands, too. Everyone with a history of travel from the UK since December 7 will be traced and tested, the state health department said.
In a circular to all airlines, aviation regulator DGCA asked them to strictly adhere to the arrival deadline of 11.59pm on Tuesday for flights from the UK. Air India and Vistara have advanced their Tuesday departures from Mumbai and Delhi by five and 10 hours, respectively, so that these flights can return ahead of the shutdown. Airlines operating between India and other countries are barred from allowing any flyer arriving from the UK to board another flight “either directly or indirectly”, the DGCA said.
Cargo and special flights are exempt from the nine-day suspension for now.
India has had an air-bubble agreement with the UK since international travel resumed, under which four airlines currently operate 67 weekly flights — British Airways (29), Air India (23), Virgin Atlantic (8) and Vistara (7) — between various Indian cities and London. Since all these airlines have flexible Covid-specific booking policies, affected passengers will get the option of refunds or rebooking, sources said.
“We are mainly seeing traffic to India on these flights, and not so much on UK-bound ones. The flyers are mostly expats and Indian students coming home for the holidays,” said a senior official of an international airline.
The decision to suspend flights was taken after Union health secretary Rajesh Bhu- shan wrote to his aviation ministry counterpart P S Kharola on Monday about the new coronavirus strain in the UK. “India has been seeing a sustained decline in the number of fresh Covid cases for over 2.5 months now, accompanied by a decline in the number of deaths. In this scenario, any interjection of (the new virus strain) thro- ugh passengers with air travel history could pose a risk to pandemic management here,” the health secretary wrote.
Accordingly, the joint monitoring group headed by the director general of health services recommended flight suspension to and from the UK, besides mandatory RT-PCR testing for those arriving from there.
Globally, the list of countries halting travel to and from the UK for varying periods lengthened to over 30 as speculation raged about the mutant coronavirus strain going “out of control” in Britain.
As concerns in India mou- nted over the new virus strain, Union health minister Harsh Vardhan reassured people that there was no reason to panic. Responding to a question at a presser, he said, “I would say this to all, that all these imaginary situations, imaginary talks, imaginary panic… don’t involve yourself in this,” he was quoted by PTI as saying.
“The government is fully alert about everything. If you ask me, there is no reason to panic…,” Vardhan said. He said the government had done everything that was important to handle the Covid-19 situation in the last one year.
The scientific community, Vardhan added, had very ably risen to the occasion, continuously striving and contributing to whatever was needed to combat Covid-19, PTI reported.
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