New Delhi, Nov 28: As more countries announce travel curbs over the detection of new variant of coronavirus Omicron, the central government on Sunday said it would review the resumption of scheduled international commercial flights.
On Saturday, the government had listed a number of countries in the ‘at risk’ category. These include South Africa, China, Botswana, those in Europe including the UK, Brazil, Israel, Bangladesh, Mauritius, New Zealand, Zimbabwe, Singapore, Israel and Hong Kong.
The Centre would take a decision on the effective date of resumption of commercial international passenger flights after reviewing the “evolving global scenario” over Omicron variant of coronavirus, the Ministry of Home Affairs said. On Friday, the government had decided to resume commercial international flights from December 15.
The MHA said that the government has decided to review the standard operating procedure on testing and surveillance of incoming international passengers, especially for those countries identified ‘at risk’ category. The MHA further said that Airport Health Officials (APHOs) and Port Health Officials (PHOs) would be sensitised for strict supervision of testing protocol at airports/ ports.
The Centre also directed the state and union territory governments to increase Covid-19 testing, augment healthcare infrastructure, and increase genome sequencing.
In the letter, Bhushan said that along with screening of passengers from “at-risk” nations and 14-day quarantine, the states should continue to monitor “hotspots” or areas where cluster of positive cases have emerged recently.
States should keep a close check on the emerging trend of cases and the positivity in an area and quickly isolate hotspots for effective containment of Covid-19, the letter stated.
