New Delhi: Travellers wait in a queue to enter Terminal-3 of Indira Gandhi International Airport
Highlights
- Trinamool Congress is actively trying to spread party base across the country.
- Recently, Mamata Banerjee during meeting with Sharad Pawar said "there is no UPA"
- Banerjee, who met Pawar recently, had taken veiled swipes at Congress leader Rahul Gandhi
The Union Health Ministry on Thursday said that two cases of new Covid-19 variant 'Omicron' were detected in the country - both being from Karnataka. Both the patients are male aged 66 and 46 years, having mild symptoms. Severe illness has not been noted yet, Lav Agarwal, Joint Secretary, Union Health Ministry said during a press conference.
Meanwhile, Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya on Thursday held a meeting with airport and port health officers as well as other authorities over screening and surveillance at all points of entry amid concerns over the new coronavirus variant 'Omicron', official sources said. The health ministry has been advising states and Union territories to keep a strict vigil and undertake surveillance of international passengers coming to the country through various airports. Amid the growing concerns over the spread of the new variant, the central government had issued new guidelines for international passengers.
Omicron cases in India | Guidelines for international passengers
- RT-PCR tests are mandatory for travelers arriving and transiting from ‘at-risk' countries. List of countries from where travelers would need to follow additional measures on arrival in India, including post-arrival testing are those in Europe - including The United Kingdom, and South Africa, Brazil, Botswana, China, Mauritius, New Zealand, Zimbabwe, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Israel.
- Testing of samples of international travelers coming from ‘at risk’ countries on the first day and of specified category of passengers on the eighth day to be scrupulously done. States/UTs have been asked to send all positive samples for genome sequencing to INSACOG labs (mapped with states) promptly and that the states should undertake contact tracing of positive individuals and follow up for 14 days.
- Travelers must submit a self-declaration form on the Air Suvidha portal and upload a negative RT-PCR report, along with a declaration of the authenticity of the report, and download the Aarogya Setu app.
- A random 2% of the passengers arriving from not-at-risk countries will also be tested for Covid-19. The same rules will apply to those arriving at seaports and land ports, said the government.
- If travelers are tested positive, they shall be managed at separate isolation facilities and treated as per laid down standard protocol, including contact tracing, and the contacts of such positive cases should be kept under institutional quarantine or at home quarantine monitored strictly by the concerned state government as per laid down protocol.
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