NEW DELHI, Jan. 7 (Xinhua) -- Chief Minister of Indian capital Delhi, Arvind Kejriwal Thursday urged the federal government to extend ban on British flights in wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
"Centre (federal government) has decided to lift the ban and start UK flights. In view of extremely serious COVID-19 situation in UK, I would urge central government to extend the ban till 31 Jan," Kejriwal wrote on social media networking platform - twitter.
"With great difficulty, people have brought COVID-19 situation in control. UK’s COVID-19 situation is very serious. Now, why lift ban and expose our people to risk?"
Indian government partially lifted the ban and resumed India to Britain flights from Wednesday. According to civil aviation ministry, the flights from Britain to India will begin arriving from Friday.
The temporary flight ban was imposed in wake of the new strain of COVID-19 found in Britain. Authorities had ordered surveillance of all passengers who travelled from or transited through Britain in the last four weeks prior to the flight ban.
So far 73 cases of mutant COVID-19 strain have been detected in India.
The positive samples are being tested at 10 Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genomics Consortium (INSACOG) Labs across India.
According to officials, all these persons have been kept in single room isolation in designated health care facilities by respective local governments.
"Their close contacts have also been put under quarantine. Comprehensive contact tracing has been initiated for co-travellers, family contacts and others," the health ministry said. "Genome sequencing on other specimens is going on." Enditem
