Omicron variant | Flying to India? Here's all you need to know

The emergence of Omicron variant of the novel coronavirus has led to a lot of changes in travel guidelines for passengers arriving in India from abroad.

Here are the rules announced by the Indian govt for international arrivals in effect from December 1:

All international passengers will have to submit a travel history of the last 14 days on govt’s Air Suvidha portal before the taking the flight to India. The travel history is a part of a self-declaration form.

Passengers travelling to India will also have to upload a negative RT-PCR report. The test should have been conducted within 72 hours prior to the journey.

Airlines will only be allowed to board passengers who have submitted their travel history and a negative RT-PCR test result.

All international passengers will have to undergo thermal screening on arrival at an Indian airport and those who are found symptomatic will be immediately isolated and taken to a medical facility. If they test positive, standard operation procedure like quarantine and tracing and testing of contacts will be followed.

All travellers from ‘at risk’ countries listed by the govt will have to submit a sample for a Covid-19 test on arrival at the airport. They will have to wait at the airport till the report comes. The cost for these tests will have to be borne by the passengers.

According to the govt list, at risk countries are the European countries, the UK, South Africa, Brazil, Botswana, China, Mauritius, New Zealand, Zimbabwe, Singapore, Hong Kong and Israel.

If they test negative, they will have quarantine at home for 7 days and do a re-test on the 8th day.

If the passenger tests positive at the airport, the sample will be sent for genome sequencing and they will be taken an isolation facility.

There are two kinds of Covid-19 tests that the passengers can choose from – the standard RT-PCR test and what is being called a rapid PCR test. Passengers can also pre-book this test.

While the RT-PCR takes about 4 hours for the report to come and is cheaper, the rapid PCR tests takes 30 mins to 45 mins but costs more.

Several airports like Delhi, Hyderabad and Mumbai have reduced the price of the rapid PCR by Rs 500-600 since more people are opting for it as it is quicker. But the test still costs more than Rs 3000.

Passengers arriving from countries not in the ‘at risk’ list will be allowed to leave the airport and self-monitor themselves for 14 days.

Random testing of international arrivals will also be done at the airports. The govt will pay for these random tests.

However, India is not entirely resuming regular international flights. The govt had announced that regular international flights would resume from December 15 but it was put on hold due to the Omicron variant.

Currently international passengers flights operations are mainly restricted to countries India has air bubble agreements with.