Driving Naari Programme launched in Chandigarh
Amritsar: As many as 125 passengers of an Italy-Amritsar flight have tested positive for Covid-19 on arrival at Amritsar airport, VK Seth, Airport Director said on Thursday.
The flight had 179 passengers on board. The passengers who tested positive will be sent to institutional quarantine, said state health officials. This comes amid heightened testing at all airports across the country, especially those that receive international passengers.
Meanwhile, ambulances were sighted waiting outside the Amritsar airport after 125 Returnees from Italy tested positive for Covid-19 on arrival. Chaotic visuals from the Amritsar airport showed a large number of passengers waiting to leave and policemen trying to control the crowd. Many of the passengers questioned why they tested positive after Covid negative results in Italy.
Punjab | 125 passengers of an international chartered flight from Italy have tested positive for Covid-19 on arrival at Amritsar airport pic.twitter.com/YGBpArLC0T
— ANI (@ANI) January 6, 2022
India on Thursday saw the biggest single-day jump of 495 Omicron cases, taking the total number of infections of the new variant of coronavirus to 2,630. Of the total cases, Maharashtra has the maximum at 797. The country reported 90,928 fresh coronavirus infections, the highest in over 200 days, that pushed its caseload to 3,51,09,286.
Meanwhile, the Centre has urged nine states and union territories to ramp up COVID-19 testing to ensure that infected people do not spread the virus to others.
In a letter to Tamil Nadu, Punjab, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Mizoram, Meghalaya, Jammu and Kashmir and Bihar, Additional Secretary of Union Health Ministry Arti Ahuja pointed out a considerable decline in COVID-19 testing amid rising cases and positivity rate and said it is a “cause of concern”.
In the absence of sufficient testing, it is rather impossible to determine the true level of infection spread in the community, Ahuja said in her letter dated January 5.
