NEW DELHI (INDIA) – India will conduct COVID-19 molecular tests, which would be mandatory for people coming directly or indirectly from the United Kingdom, South Africa and Brazil in an attempt to contain the spread of more infectious virus variants found in those countries.
India, which has reported the highest number of overall COVID cases after the United States, found the South African variant in four people last month and the Brazilian one in one person this month.
The government has said when compared to the UK mutation, the South African and Brazilian strains can more easily infect a person’s lungs. India has so far reported 187 cases of infection with the UK variant.
The government late on Wednesday said airlines would have to segregate inbound travellers from those countries from next week. It was also informed that India does not have direct flights with Brazil and South Africa, and most people travelling from these countries generally transit through Middle Eastern airports.
India’s Ministry of Health and Family Welfare said in a statement, “All the travellers arriving from/transiting through flights originating in United Kingdom, Europe or the Middle East shall be mandatorily subjected to self-paid confirmatory molecular tests on arrival.”
All flyers will also have to conduct a recent COVID-negative report before getting on board any flight to India, except in extraordinary circumstances like death in a family.
India’s coronavirus infections rose by of 12,881 in the past 24 hours to about 11 million, while deaths increased by 101 to more than 156,000. It was the highest daily increase in cases in a week. The states of Kerala and Maharashtra have seen a recent increase in cases, which is probably due to further reopening of economic and other activities.
India has also administered 9.2 million vaccine doses since starting its campaign on January 16.
A survey conducted by New Delhi-based online platform LocalCircles, released on Thursday, found that half of its 8,211 respondents expressed their will to get inoculated, compared with a vaccine hesitancy of 69% in the first week of January.