With the discovery of a new strain of CoVid-19 virus in the UK, the Government has swung into preventive measures to ensure they don’t have to deal with the repercussions of being caught unaware of the Virus another time. While the Government of India has barred flights from the UK in the coming days, and those who will arrive in the next few hours or so will be subject to an RT-PCR test, Maharashtra has become even more stringent.

After states such as Maharashtra and Karnataka started to put together their guidelines depending on their local requirements, the Government of India has also issued requirements to be complied with on December 22, 2020, for those who fly or have recently flown into India from the UK.

For everyone who has travelled from or transited from the UK to India from November 25, 2020, onwards, their details will be passed on by the Bureau of Immigration to various health monitoring agencies across the states by the Indian Bureau of Immigration.

• Those who arrived in India between November 25 to December 8, 2020, will be asked to self monitor their health. If they develop any symptoms, then they will be subject to RT-PCR testing and on testing positive for the virus, a second spike-gene based RT-PCR test will be also conducted.
• For those who arrived between December 9 and 23, 2020, they will be subjected to daily health follow up by the health authorities for up to 14 days after they arrive in India. Irrespective of their earlier test on arrival in India, they will be subject to another test, and if appropriate, genomic sequencing will be done of the virus if they are tested positive to see if there is the new strand. All positive cases will be sent to institutional quarantine but dealt with differently depending on the kind of virus they have now.
• Positive cases will be subject to institutional quarantine.

More details can be found in this SOP released today by the Government of India. For Maharashtra arrivals, these guidelines apply.

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