Lagatar24 Desk
New Delhi, Nov.30: New guidelines for overseas travellers were announced by the central government today, and they will take effect at midnight. These rules were declared following a review of public health readiness with states and union territories in light of ‘Omicron.’
Passengers from “at-risk” nations will be tested for Covid upon arrival and will not be allowed to leave the airport until the results of their RT-PCR tests are received. If they are confirmed to be negative, they will be placed on a seven-day home quarantine before being re-tested on the eighth day. To achieve proper house isolation, state personnel will physically visit their homes.
Passengers who test positive for SARS-CoV-2 will be isolated and treated, and their samples will be sent to the INSACOG Labs network, a multi-laboratory, multi-agency pan-India network set up by the government to monitor genomic variations in the virus, for genome sequencing to determine the virus strain. States will next conduct contact tracing and follow up with these positive persons for 14 days.
Passengers from “at-risk” nations can expect to wait at airports until their findings are available. The United Kingdom, all 44 European countries, South Africa, Brazil, Bangladesh, Botswana, China, Mauritius, New Zealand, Zimbabwe, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Israel are now on the list of countries designated “at-risk.”
States have been instructed not to relax their watch and to maintain a close eye on overseas passengers arriving in the country via various airports, ports, and land border crossings. The strategy of “Test, Track, Treat, Vaccinate” was reemphasized. States have also been encouraged to increase testing because the ‘Omicron’ strain is said to be resistant to RT-PCR and Rapid Antigen Tests, which have previously been used to detect Covid. It has been recommended that testing infrastructure be strengthened, testing recommendations be strictly followed, and a healthy ratio of RT-PCR tests be maintained, as these have been found to be more effective in detection.
The Centre has also urged that places where recent clusters of positive cases have emerged be closely monitored and that all positive samples be sent to the INSACOG network for genome sequencing as soon as possible. Health infrastructure readiness, including the availability of ICU, oxygen beds, ventilators, and other equipment, has been recommended, with a focus on rural locations and paediatric situations. When the second wave of Covid hit India earlier this year, health services were found to be severely deficient.
