India sets 7-day home quarantine for international travelers

NEW DELHI, Jan 9 – International passengers coming to India will have to undergo mandatory seven-day home quarantine. The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare of the Government of India issued these fresh guidelines in supersession of all other earlier guidelines on the subject. The revised guidelines for international arrivals in India will be valid from January 11, 2022.

All international travelers, including those two percent who are selected for random testing on arrival and found negative, will undergo home quarantine for seven days and shall undertake an RT-PCR test on the eighth day of arrival in India.

The Centre took this decision amid rising Covid-19 cases in India driven by the highly transmissible Omicron variant, which has been classified as a variant of concern by the World Health Organization (WHO).

The passengers should upload the results of the RT-PCR test done on the eighth day on the Air Suvidha portal, which will be monitored by the respective state governments, the new guidelines said.

If the Covid test results come negative, passengers have been advised to self-monitor their health for the next seven days. However, if found positive, their samples will be further sent for genomic testing at the INSACOG laboratory network.

They shall be managed at an isolation facility and treated as per the standard protocol, the guidelines further said.

The health ministry also uploaded a fresh list of countries from where travelers would need to follow additional measures on arrival in India, including post-arrival testing (countries at-risk). These countries are countries in Europe including The United Kingdom, South Africa, Brazil, Botswana, China, Ghana, Mauritius, New Zealand, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Hong Kong, and Israel.

India’s active caseload currently stands at 4,72,169, which is 1.34%. The recovery rate currently is at 97.30%. A total of 40,895 people have recovered in the last 24 hours making the total recoveries to 3,44,12,740.

A total of 1,41,986 new cases have been reported in the last 24 hours. The daily positivity rate is 9.28% and the weekly positivity rate is 5.66%.

Edited by Sanjay Kumar