Govt should reconsider decision on international flights: Survey

Mumbai: As much as 64 per cent of respondents in a survey conducted over the government’s decision to allow scheduled international operations to and from India from December 15 want the Modi dispensation to reconsider it in the wake of a new Covid variant.

Conducted immediately after the government announced the resumption of scheduled international flight services, which remain suspended since March 2020 due to the pandemic, the survey carried out by the online platform LocalCircles, also revealed that some 72 per cent of Indians want the government to implement mandatory RT-PCR test for Covid at boarding as well for international travellers coming from countries with high TPR.

The government on Friday announced revising travel guidelines for international travellers. As per the latest notification issued by the Ministry of Civil Aviation, scheduled commercial international passenger services to and from India will resume from 15th December 2021 barring 14 countries classified as at risk.

The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) has categorised these international countries into three categories “not at risk”, “at risk”, and air bubble, with separate restrictions and bubble flight arrangements, will continue as is with some capacity changes.

The revised travel guidelines, however, come as several other countries have brought back travel restrictions in view of the newly discovered and possibly vaccine-resistant Covid-19 variant B.1.1529, as per LocalCircles.

WHO designated this variant as a variant of concern and named it Omicron within an unusually short window of 48 hours after several scientists and epidemiologists around the world raised the red flag. Data suggests that the variant has 32 mutations and a 500 per cent advantage over the base or alpha variant of COVID, according to the LocalCircles.

Taking cognisance of the revised guidelines for International, LocalCircles decided to conduct a survey to understand the pulse of citizens on restarting international flights from December 15, 2021, and to understand what should be the approach for international travellers coming from these countries, it said.

The survey received over 16,000 responses from residents in over 309 districts of the country.

Of this, 66 per cent of respondents were men while the remaining 34 per cent were women. Besides, 49 per cent of respondents were from tier-I, 33 per cent from Tier-II and the remaining 2 per cent were from tierII/IV and rural districts.

The first question was if the Government needs to reconsider starting international flights from Dec 15.

In response, 64 per cent of citizens said Yes, while 25 per cent of citizens said that it is important to restart international flights and 11 per cent couldn’t say anything, according to LocalCircles.

The government had exempted travellers from 99 countries from mandatory quarantine requirements and instituted a mandatory RTPCR test at arrival.