New Delhi: With the Omicron strain threat looming large the Centre has announced new travel rules that will come into effect from midnight Wednesday. All international passengers will have to abide by the rules.
As per the new rules, passengers, who are arriving from countries that have been named ‘at risk’, will be tested for Covid-19 on arrival. They will not be allowed to leave the airport till their RT-PCR test reports are declared. It means that passengers should be prepared for a long wait that may go up to six hours. Even if the report is negative, the passenger will have to undergo seven-day home quarantine and will be again tested on the eighth day. If the report also comes out negative, then the passenger will be allowed to lead a normal life.
If found positive for the virus, passengers will be isolated and treated, and their samples will immediately be sent to the INSACOG Labs network, a multi-laboratory, multi-agency, pan-India network set up by the government to monitor genomic variations in the SARS-CoV-2, for genome sequencing to determine the strain of the virus. States will then undertake contact tracing of these positive individuals and follow up for 14 days.
Passengers from ‘at-risk’ countries have been advised to prepare to wait at the airports till their results are out. The list of countries deemed ‘at-risk’ for now includes the United Kingdom, all 44 countries in Europe, South Africa, Brazil, Bangladesh, Botswana, China, Mauritius, New Zealand, Zimbabwe, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Israel.
States have been advised to not let their guards down and keep strict vigil on international passengers coming to India through various airports, ports, and land border crossings. States have also been advised to ramp up testing as the ‘Omicron’ variant reportedly can’t escape RT-PCR and Rapid Antigen Tests that have been used to detect Covid-19 so far.