The government announced on Friday that people arriving in India from abroad will need to go through home quarantine for a week and undergo an RT-PCR test for Covid on the eighth day, according to the new rules that will come into effect from Tuesday.

The number of "at-risk" countries has been increased to 19, with nine more being added this month. European countries including the UK, South Africa and Brazil among the countries included in the list.  

All passengers have to go into home isolation for seven days and take an RT-PCR test after that. If they test positive, they will be sent to an isolation facility and their samples will be sent for genome testing.

Passengers seated near them and cabin crew will be treated as contacts.

If the test is negative, the passengers "will further self-monitor their health for next seven days", the rules say.

The new rules were announced on a day when India reported 1,17,100 new cases of Covid which represents a 28 per cent jump in 24 hours. The number of cases have shot up from 10,000 to more than a lakh in just a week as the third wave has hit the country.

The stringent measures have been introduced to tackle the surge in infections driven by the highly transmissible Omicron variant of Covid-19 which is wreaking havoc worldwide.