NE NEWS SERVICE
NEW DELHI, DEC 20
Passengers arriving at six major airports in India on or after Monday from countries designated as ‘at risk’ due to the spread of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus will be required to pre-book RT-PCR tests, according to instructions issued last week by the ministry of civil aviation. According to a government notification, the ‘Air Suvidha’ portal will be modified to accommodate passengers arriving from ‘at risk’ countries or who have visited them within the last 14 days.
The norms have been listed for airports in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Bengaluru, and Hyderabad. The ministry clarified that this is only the first stage of protocol implementation, and that once the system has been stabilised and passengers have experienced no major difficulties in pre-booking, the rule may be extended to other airports as well.
The real-time reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) is widely regarded as one of the most precise laboratory methods available for detecting, tracking, and studying the presence of Covid-19 in a person. Airports in India have been conducting both rapid and routine RT-PCR tests, handling up to 15,000 samples per day, with results taking anywhere from one hour to eight hours.
