NEW DELHI: India will make COVID-19 molecular tests mandatory for people arriving directly or indirectly from the United Kingdom, South Africa and Brazil in a bid to contain the spread of more infectious virus variants found in those countries.
India, which has reported the highest number of overall COVID-19 cases after the United States, detected the South African variant in four people last month and the Brazilian one in one person this month.
The government has said the South African and Brazilian strains can more easily infect a person’s lungs than the UK mutation. India has so far reported 187 cases of infection with the UK variant.
The government late on Wednesday said airlines would be required from next week to segregate inbound travelers from those countries. India does not have direct flights with Brazil and South Africa, and most people traveling from these countries generally transit through Middle Eastern airports.
“All the travelers arriving from/transiting through flights originating in United Kingdom, Europe or the Middle East shall be mandatorily subjected to self-paid confirmatory molecular tests on arrival,” India’s Ministry of Health and Family Welfare said in a statement.
All flyers will also have to carry a recent COVID-negative report before boarding any flight to India, except in extraordinary circumstances like death in a family.
India’s coronavirus infections rose by of 12,881 in the past 24 hours to about 11 million, while deaths increased by 101 to more than 156,000. It was the highest daily increase in cases in a week. The states of Kerala and Maharashtra have seen a recent uptick in cases possibly due to further reopening of economic and other activities.
A government serological survey released this month said nearly 300 million of India’s 1.35 billion people may already have been infected by the virus.
The country has also administered 9.2 million vaccine doses since starting its campaign on Jan. 16.
A survey conducted by New Delhi-based online platform LocalCircles, released on Thursday, found that half of its 8,211 respondents were willing to get inoculated, compared with a vaccine hesitancy of 69 percent in the first week of January.
India to test travelers from Brazil, South Africa, UK after detecting new coronavirus strains
https://arab.news/zxsgn
India to test travelers from Brazil, South Africa, UK after detecting new coronavirus strains
- India detected the South African variant in four people last month and the Brazilian one in one person this month
Tanzania opposition says 2,000 killed in election violence
- Opposition party Chadema’s deputy chairperson John Heche said Tanzania witnessed “mass killings of more than 2,000 people and over 5,000 injured in the space of just one week“
- The violence was carried out “with direct involvement of the state“
DAR ES SALAM: Tanzania’s main opposition party on Thursday said more than 2,000 people were killed in a week of election violence, calling for sanctions against officials it accused of crimes against humanity.
President Samia Suluhu Hassan was declared the winner of October 29 polls with 98 percent of the vote, but her government was accused of rigging the polls and overseeing a campaign of murders and abductions of her critics that sparked nationwide protests and riots.
Opposition party Chadema’s deputy chairperson John Heche told reporters that Tanzania witnessed “mass killings of more than 2,000 people and over 5,000 injured in the space of just one week.”
He said the violence was carried out “with direct involvement of the state” and that it amounted to “crimes against humanity.”
Previous opposition counts had put the deaths at more than 1,000. The government has not given a death toll.
Heche urged the international community to “impose sanctions on all individuals involved in planning and executing these acts of criminality and crimes against humanity.”
In a live online broadcast, he said those responsible should be subjected to travel bans, including restrictions on their families.
Heche also said the unrest triggered a surge of people fleeing the country, alongside “the abduction and enforced disappearance of hundreds of civilians.”
Chadema further accused security units of carrying out rapes, torture and “gruesome killings,” and of engaging in widespread looting and arbitrary arrests.
The party urged authorities to return the bodies of those killed so families could bury them.
Authorities have continued to stifle dissent, with planned protests earlier this week seeing empty streets and a significant security presence.
Hassan last week justified the killings, saying it was necessary to prevent the overthrow of the government.
“The force that was used corresponds to the situation at hand,” she said in a speech.
Hassan has formed an inquiry commission into the violence, which the opposition says includes only government loyalists, instead calling for an independent investigation.
