Fully vaccinated international passengers from 82 countries will be permitted quarantine-free entry from February 14, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare said on Thursday.
The requirement of compulsory on-arrival testing for passengers from certain countries identified as “at-risk” will also be removed. This had led to over-crowding at airports and forced passengers to pay for costlier rapid RT-PCR tests to avoid long queues.
“The ‘at-risk’ tag for countries has also been removed. Accordingly, the need for giving samples on port of arrival and waiting till the result is obtained from countries ‘at-risk’ is dispensed with,” Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya tweeted on Thursday.
Earlier, passengers from ‘at-risk’ countries were required to undergo home quarantine for seven days on arrival in India.
According to the latest guidelines of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, quarantine-free entry for fully vaccinated passengers from certain countries is based on the principle of reciprocity.
“On the basis of reciprocity, the travellers from only such countries which provide quarantine-free entry to Indians will be allowed for relaxation,” the guidelines say. These include countries with which India has an agreement on mutual recognition of vaccination certificates of either nationally recognised vaccines or those recognised by the WHO. Countries with which India doesn’t have such an agreement, but they still exempt Indian citizens who are fully vaccinated will also be permitted quarantine-free entry.
The Health Ministry identified 82 such countries, including UK, US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, among others.
A passenger travelling to India will have to upload a self-declaration form along with either a negative report or a certificate of completion of full vaccination. Random post-arrival tests will be conducted only on 2% of passengers in an aircraft. The protocol would remain the same for passengers arriving via seaports or land ports. The travel industry welcomed the move. This is a much-awaited move that will certainly boost the morale of travellers planning to visit India and open up employment and business opportunities for the travel trade fraternity which is on the verge of collapse due to the pandemic,” said Jyoti Mayal, President, Travel Agents Association of India. She said that the industry now hopes that the government will fully reopen international flights.
As of now, India only allows limited number of flights from and to 35 countries under air-bubble agreements with them. Though the government had announced that it would resume international flights from December 15, the decision was withdrawn within days due to the spread of Omicron variant of COVID-19.
The tourism industry estimates that COVID-19 has led to a loss of ₹150 lakh crore since March 2020. Before travel restrictions were imposed due to COVID-19 globally, India would witness 1.1 crore inbound tourists and 2.7 crore outbound tourists per annum, which is now down to a trickle though latest government figures are not available.
