India to lift ban on UK flights from 8 Jan in a limited manner amid new Covid strain: Details here

India on Friday said that it has decided to lift the temporary ban on flights from the UK and will resume operations from 8 January in a limited manner amid concerns of the new and highly infectious covid-19 strain spread, which was first identified in Britain.

Union Minister of Civil Aviation Hardeep Singh Puri today said, "Operations till 23 January will be restricted to 15 flights per week each for carriers of two countries to and from Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad only."

He also mentioned that the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) will be issuing a detailed guideline shortly.

India on 21 December ordered to impose a temporary suspension on flights coming from UK after the emergence of a new and highly infectious strain of the coronavirus in Britain. The suspension of flights came into effect from 22 December midnight and will continue till 31 December, the government added.

Further, the ministry also added that as a measure of abundant precaution, passengers arriving from UK in all transit flights (flights that have taken off or flights which are reaching India before 22nd Dec at 23.59 hrs) should be subject to mandatory RT-PCR test on arrival at the airports concerned.

However, the government later extended the temporary suspension of flights to the UK till 7 January.

"Decision has been taken to extend the temporary suspension of flights to & from the UK till 7 January 2021," Puri said on social media platform Twitter.

Meanwhile, India today reported four more cases of a strain of Covid-19, taking the total tally to 29.

"All the 29 persons are in physical isolation in health facilities," an official said.

Of the 29, the mutated UK strain was detected in the samples of eight persons at the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) in New Delhi, two in the Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (IGIB), Delhi, one in the National Institute of Biomedical Genomics (NIBMG), Kalyani (near Kolkata), five in the National Institute of Virology in Pune, three in Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) in Hyderabad and 10 were sequenced at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences Hospital (NIMHANS) Bengaluru.

The government is doing a comprehensive contact tracing exercise for their co-travellers, family, among others.