Even As Number Of Cases With Mutant Strain Are Increasing, India Is Set To Resume Flights To UK
Air travel between India and the UK which was suspended last month following the discovery of the highly contagious strain of COVID-19 there is set to resume from next week.
Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri said on Friday that the flight services between India and UK will resume from January 8.
India had suspended flights to and from the UK on December 22. Initially, the suspension was till December 31. However, in the wake of increasing cases of the new strain, it was decided to extend the temporary suspension of flights to from the UK till January 7.
Prior to the suspension, over 60 flights per week were being operated between UK and India.
However, from next week it will be just 30 flights per week 15 from India and 15 from the UK.
The flights will be limited to four Indian cities - Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad.
Air India on Friday said that the passengers who had booked their flight on December 23 will be accommodated in the first flight out.
"All the passengers had been contacted on December 22 and their booked flights were rescheduled. Today after the announcement, SMS messages and mails have gone to the passengers informing them of the rescheduled date of travel. The passengers who booked their flight on December 23 will be accommodated in the first flight out," the airline said in a press note.
India was one of the nearly fifty countries around the world which had suspended travel to the UK in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak there caused by the mutant strain.
So far no other country has announced plans to resume flights to the UK as the outbreak continues to be critical.
India is going ahead with the resumption of travel to and from the UK even as the number of COVID-19 infections caused by the mutant strain has reached 29 in the country so far.
While many more UK returnees have tested positive for COIVD-19 results of their genome sequencing are still awaited.
Another major worry for India is the high number of recent UK returnees remaining untraceable.?
Across the country, hundreds of UK returnees have gone missing and the authorities are finding it difficult to track them.
Once the flights resume, all incoming passengers will have to submit a self-declaration form at least 72 hours before the scheduled travel and should carry a Negative RT-PCR Test Report for which test should have been conducted within 72 hours prior to undertaking the journey.
All the passengers arriving from the UK would be mandatorily subjected to self-paid RT-PCR tests on arrival at the Indian airports.
