7-day quarantine made must for all flyers arriving in India on overseas flights

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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.</p>
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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.  </p>
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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.</p>
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Passengers seated near them and cabin crew will be treated as contacts.</p>
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If the test is negative, the passengers "will further self-monitor their health for next seven days", the rules say.</p>
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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.</p>
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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. </p>