Amritsar:125 flyers from Italy test Covid positive

At least 125 passengers flying from Italy to Amritsar have tested Covid positive on arrival at Amritsar airport on Thursday. There were 179 passengers on the Air India Italy-Amritsar flight, said VK Seth, Airport Director. This comes amid heightened testing at all airports across the country, especially those that receive international passengers. India earlier identified several countries as ‘at risk’ in the wake of the outbreak of Omicron. Italy was not one of them. On Thursday, India recorded the biggest single-day jump of 495 Omicron cases, taking the total tally of the new variant to 2,630, according to the health ministry data. Health ministry officials have said that in bigger cities Omicron has become the predominant strain.n It was a chartered flight.

 Meanwhile, the Centre wrote to 9 states and UTs to step up testing as the country is battling possible a fresh wave of the pandemic. Punjab is one of the states where insufficient testing has been flagged. The country has on Thursday recorded 90,928 new cases of the novel coronavirus, along with 325 deaths due to the infection. According to the data shared by the Union Health Ministry, the country saw a total of 19,206 discharges in the last 24 hours, taking the total recovery rate at around 97.81 per cent and total recoveries data reached to 3,43,41,009.