India lifts pre-boarding Covid tests for travellers from China

Measure was applied to six Asian countries after China witnessed a spike in Covid-19 cases due to the BF.7 variant

A healthcare worker collects a Covid test swab sample at the Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi, India, in December 2021. Reuters

India has lifted the requirement for pre-boarding Covid tests for travellers arriving from China and nearby countries, following a sharp decline in infections there.

New Delhi introduced the measure on January 1, citing an increase in Covid cases due to the highly transmissible BF. 7 coronavirus variant in China. Travellers coming from Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Thailand were also required to show a negative RT-PCR test taken 72 hours before departure.

They also had to upload a self-health declaration form on the Air Suvidha portal that India launched during the peak of the pandemic to enable contact tracing of foreign arrivals.

Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan told the civil aviation authority that New Delhi was lifting these rules amid a downward trend of Covid cases in all six countries.

The Health Ministry will, however, continue random testing on 2 per cent of all arrivals from abroad, irrespective of the country of origin, to track emerging variants.

Covid-19 killed more than 530,000 people and infected about 44 million people in India, which witnessed a peak in cases in early 2021.

The daily case count has now dropped to an average of 100 or fewer, with 85 new infections on Monday, according to Health Ministry data.

Globally, the number of daily cases has dropped by 89 per cent in the past 28 days, according to the WHO.