New Delhi, Dec 29 (PTI): The government is likely to make it mandatory for passengers arriving from China and five other places to have negative RT-PCR reports from next week, official sources said on Wednesday. They also cautioned that the next 40 days will be crucial as India may see a Covid surge in January.<\/p>\n
Even if there is a wave, deaths and hospitalisation will be very low, the Health Ministry sources said.<\/p>\n
“Previously, it has been noticed that a new wave of COVID-19 hits India around 30-35 days after it hits East Asia…. This has been a trend,” an official said.<\/p>\n
The sources said filling up of ‘air suvidha’ forms and 72-hour prior RT-PCR testing may be made mandatory from next week for international passengers coming from China, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Thailand and Singapore.<\/p>\n
The sources said 39 international passengers were found positive for COVID-19 out of the 6,000 tested on arrival in the last two days.<\/p>\n
Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya will visit the airport in Delhi on Thursday to take stock of testing and screening facilities there, they said.<\/p>\n
The proposed tightening of Covid guidelines and warning of a fresh surge come days after Health Minister Mandaviya asked Congress leader Rahul Gandhi to consider suspending the Bharat Jodo Yatra if COVID-19 protocols could not be followed.<\/p>\n
The yatra, currently on winter break, will resume on January 3.<\/p>\n
Amid a spike in COVID-19 cases in some countries, including China and South Korea, the government has sounded an alert and asked states and Union territories to prepare for any eventuality.<\/p>\n
Following the surge, the government made random coronavirus testing mandatory for two per cent of passengers arriving in each international flight from Saturday.<\/p>\n
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Health Minister Mandaviya have held meetings to assess the country’s preparedness to deal with a fresh surge in cases.<\/p>\n
Mock drills were held at health facilities across India on Tuesday to check operational readiness to deal with any spurt in COVID-19 infection, with Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya saying the country has to remain alert and prepared as cases are rising in the world.<\/p>\n
The latest spike in cases is being driven by Omicron sub-variant BF.7.<\/p>\n
The official sources said the transmissibility of this BF.7 sub-variant is very high. A person infected with the sub-variant can further infect 16 persons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
New Delhi, Dec 29 (PTI): The government is likely to make it mandatory for passengers arriving from China and five other places to have negative RT-PCR reports from next week, official sources said on Wednesday. They also cautioned that the next 40 days will be crucial as India may see a Covid surge in January. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-207892","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-national"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207892","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207892"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207892\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}