International arrivals: Centre updates rules, ‘at risk’ list; Scindia cracks the whip on airports – Times of India

NEW DELHI: India has removed Bangladesh from its list of Omicron at risk countries and Ghana and Tanzania have been added to the same for the purpose of mandating additional measures for arrivals from there.
The government has also mandated contactless self-declaration on Air Suvidha Portal.
“…the exemption forms from Air Suvidha portal have been discontinued, and filling of the details have been made compulsory for all international passengers arriving in India. All international passengers arriving in India are mandated to declare their current health status prior to boarding on the Air Suvidha Portal along with the required documents: Copy of Passport, PCR Negative Certificate from a test conducted within 72 hours of departure and the vaccination certificate. For immigration, the copy received in e-mail is essential on arrival in India and has to be verified at the airport health officer (APHO) counter,” the aviation ministry said in a statement on Tuesday.
In a tweet, Union aviation minister J M Scindia said: “Took stock of the preparedness, testing capacities, and the situation on the ground with regard to crowd management at both private and AAI airports. Have put an action plan with 8 compliances on immigration queues, expanding RT-PCR service providers, ramping up help desks & forex counters, along with seamless floor management. Rest assured, ministry is monitoring the situation on a daily basis and passengers shall not face any inconvenience at airports.”

The list of at risk updated on Monday includes those in Europe, UK; South Africa; Brazil; Botswana; China; Ghana; Mauritius; New Zealand; Zimbabwe; Singapore; Tanzania; Hong Kong and Israel.
The ministry says this portal “has been strengthened to accommodate travel guidelines issued on November 30, 2021,” to “ensure smooth passage of international travellers arriving in India.”
The updates include: “All applications from ‘at risk’ countries are marked with H and red band and others are green. This helps in smooth on arrival segregation and processing. This list is dynamically updated to keep up with Union health ministry updates. Application also takes into account countries visited in the last 14 days to highlight ‘at risk’ applications. This field is also made into multi-select drop-down option for standardisation…. For ‘at risk’ countries passengers are advised to pre-book their test on arrival test and the link to respective testing facility is provided to the passengers,” it adds.
All international passengers arriving/transiting from the at-risk countries are required to submit self-declaration form on Air Suvidha portal; upload negative RT-PCR report (conducted within 72 hours before the journey); post-arrival Covid-19 test at arriving airport (self-paid); home quarantine for 7 days and re-test on the eighth day and if negative, self-health monitoring for next seven days.
“Air Suvidha portal has already assisted 2.5 lakh passengers from December 1-5, 2021, since the new travel guidelines on November 30 2021. Over 1 crore passengers have benefitted from the portal since its launch in August 2020,” the ministry statement said.