India has revised its guidelines for international travellers coming to India, which includes seperate norms for travellers coming from at-risk countries and the rest others.
The guidelines will be effective from 1 December, Lav Agarwal, Join Secretary in Health Ministry, said at a press briefing today.
For travellers coming from at-risk countries, apart from the mandatory 72-hour test before arrival, they need to take an additional RT-PCR test on arrival. If the test result is positive, he or she will be treated in line with the clinical management protocols, and the sample will be sent to related labs for genomic sequencing.
If the test report is negative, the traveller will be sent to home quarantine for seven days and will need to take an RT-PCR test on the eighth day.
For travellers coming from other than at-risk countries, random samples will be taken from 2% of the travellers for RT-PCR testing on arrival the airport keeping in view the speed at which Omicron variant is spreading.
India has reported two cases of omicron variant of coronavirus, both the cases, a 66-year-old male and 46-year-old male, have been detected in the state of Karnataka.
All primary, secondary contacts of both Omicron cases detected in Karnataka have been traced and are being tested and they are under monitoring, the government said in a briefing today.
First detected in southern Africa weeks ago, Omicron is known to have spread to over a dozen countries.
The heavily mutated Omicron variant is likely to spread internationally and poses a very high risk of infection surges that could have "severe consequences" in some places, the World Health Organization (WHO) had said earlier.
The government has released a list of at-risk countries that include Hong Kong and Israel where travellers would need to follow additional measures on arrival in India.
The nations that are currently on the ‘at-risk’ list of India are – whole of Europe, UK, South Africa, Brazil, Bangladesh, Botswana, China, Mauritius, New Zealand, Zimbabwe, Singapore, Hong Kong and Israel.
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