Amid fears around new COVID-19 variant Omicron, the Jammu & Kashmir administration declared that 7-day quarantine will be mandatory for international travelers.
As many as 6 hotels have already been identified to quarantine travelers arriving in Jammu from abroad.
Meanwhile, India has revised its guidelines for international travelers, which includes separate norms for travellers coming from at-risk countries and the rest others.
For travellers coming from at-risk countries, apart from the mandatory 72-hour test before arrival, they need to take an additional RT-PCR test on arrival. If the test result is positive, he or she will be treated in line with the clinical management protocols, and the sample will be sent to related labs for genomic sequencing.
If the test report is negative, the traveller will be sent to home quarantine for seven days and will need to take an RT-PCR test on the eighth day.
For travellers coming from other than at-risk countries, random samples will be taken from 2% of the travellers for RT-PCR testing on arrival the airport keeping in view the speed at which Omicron variant is spreading.
Yesterday, Union Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia informed at the Parliament that 11 countries – the UK, South Africa, Brazil, Botswana, China, Zimbabwe, Mauritius, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Singapore and Israel – have been placed in the ‘at-risk’ category.
Meanwhile, two cases of the new Omicron variant of Coronavirus have been detected in Karnataka, the Union Health Ministry said on Thursday.
The new variant of COVID-19, first reported in South Africa, has been classified as a ‘variant of concern’ by World Health Organisation.