India makes 7-day quarantine mandatory for all international passengers
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Travellers will be subjected to an RT-OCR test after completing their home quarantine, according to the updated guideline. The new policy comes a day after 125 passengers on a chartered flight from Italy to Amritsar tested positive when they arrived at the Amritsar airport.
In reaction to the exponential spike in Omicron cases, the Indian government released a revised guideline for overseas passengers on Friday.
All international passengers arriving in India will be quarantined at home for seven days. The new regulations will take effect on January 11th.
The administration also added more countries to the list of "at-risk" nations.
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South Africa, Brazil, Botswana, China, Ghana, Mauritius, New Zealand, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Hong Kong, Israel, Congo, Ethiopia, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Nigeria, Tunisia, and Zambia are now members.
On arrival in India, visitors from "at-risk" nations will be required to submit samples for COVID testing.
According to the new restrictions, they will be allowed to leave the airport only if their test results are received.
Those who test negative will be required to quarantine for seven days at home.
They will have to do an RT-PCR test on the seventh day.
Those who test positive will have their samples sent for genetic testing.
They will be housed in a secure environment.
The States will then have to start tracking down these passengers' contacts.
This comes at a time when the spread of the Omicron variant is fueling an exponential rise in coronavirus cases across the country.
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India reported 1,17,100 additional cases in the last 24 hours on Friday, bringing the overall number of cases to 3,52,26,386 since the pandemic began in 2020.
The figures for Friday were 28% higher than the 90,928 illnesses recorded on Thursday.
After seven months, the country's daily caseload has surpassed one lakh.
When the second wave of the pandemic began to fade on June 6, India recorded 1,14,460 cases.
(With inputs from agencies)