Air India flight with 256 passengers from UK lands in Delhi amid fears of new Covid-19 strain

The government partially lifted the ban and resumed India to UK flights from January 6 after the Ministry of Civil Aviation revised the number of flights between the two countries to 30 per week.

New Delhi: An Air India flight with 256 passengers from the UK landed at Delhi's Indira Gandhi International (IGI) Airport on Friday days after the government suspended services between India and UK on December 23 amid fear of the new COVID-19 strain.

As per the officials, the Air India flight arrived at 10:20 am from London's Heathrow Airport and it had 18 passengers in business class, 218 in the economy, 9 cabin crews, 2 pilots, and 10 infants.

The government partially lifted the ban and resumed India to UK flights from January 6 after the Ministry of Civil Aviation revised the number of flights between the two countries to 30 per week- 15 each by India and UK carriers.

An advisory by Delhi's IGI airport stated that passengers should keep a gap of at least 10 hours between their arrival from the UK and the connecting flight to their cities.

The Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) issued by the Health Ministry said all the incoming passengers from the UK will require declaring their travel history of the past 14 days and will require a negative RT-PCR report of a COVID test conducted within 72 hours of their respective flights to India.

Meanwhile, the number of people who have tested positive for the new UK variant of SARS-CoV-2 in the country has climbed to 73.

On Thursday, Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal urged the Centre to extend the travel ban to the UK till January 31 in order to curb the spread of COVID-19 strain.