Jan. 6—A total of 125 passengers flying from Italy to Amritsar have tested Covid positive on arrival at Amritsar airport. The flight had 179 passengers on board. This comes amid heightened testing at all airports across the country, especially those that receive international passengers. India earlier identified several countries as 'at risk' in the wake of the outbreak of Omicron. Italy was one of them.
Airport director VK Seth has confirmed the number of passengers who were found Covid positive on Thursday.
The flight was a chartered flight though earlier it was reported that it belonged to Air India. "Several Media houses have reported that Passengers of Air India flight from Rome to Amritsar have been tested covid positive. This is wrong and baseless. Air India doesn't operate any flight from Rome currently," Air India tweeted.
The Centre on Thursday wrote to 9 states and UTs to step up testing as the country is battling possible a fresh wave of the pandemic. Punjab is one of the states where insufficient testing has been flagged.
On Thursday, India recorded the biggest single-day jump of 495 Omicron cases, taking the total tally of the new variant to 2,630, according to the health ministry data. Health ministry officials have said that in bigger cities Omicron has become the predominant strain.
So many passengers testing positive like a cluster outbreak throw a major challenge for the airport officials.
In Mumbai, hundreds of passengers on board the Cordelia cruise ship that returned from Goa tested positive.
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