India makes negative COVID test mandatory for passengers from China, five other places from 1 January

New Delhi: The Centre on Thursday made it mandatory for passengers arriving in India from China, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Thailand to provide a negative COVID report from 1 January.

They will have to upload the negative Covid reports from RT-PCR tests on the Air Suvidha portal prior to their departure, Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya said on Thursday.

The tests have to be conducted within 72 hours of undertaking the journey to India, Mandaviya said.

RT-PCR test has been made mandatory for flyers coming from China, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Thailand from 1st January 2023. They will have to upload their reports on the Air Suvidha portal before travel.

— Dr Mansukh Mandaviya (@mansukhmandviya) December 29, 2022

Airports to continue carrying out random testing of 2% of international arrivals

This requirement is in addition to the random two percent tests of all international passengers in all incoming international flights on their arrival in India irrespective of their port of departure, the minister said.

Amid a spike in coronavirus cases in China and other countries, the central government has sounded an alert, tightened COVID guidelines, and asked states and Union territories to prepare for any eventuality.

States were earlier asked to ramp up genome sequencing.

India recorded 268 new coronavirus infections, while the active cases increased to 3,552, according to the Union Health Ministry data updated on Thursday.

The daily positivity rate was recorded at 0.11 percent while the weekly positivity was pegged at 0.17 percent, the ministry said.

With inputs from PTI

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