The emergence of a new strain of coronavirus in the United Kingdom has triggered various precautionary measures in several parts of India such as the re-imposition of night curfew, an institutional quarantine at the airports and mandatory COVID-19 tests for all passengers coming from Britain.
This measure was replaced by a complete ban on incoming flights from the country at midnight on Tuesday.
Confusion prevailed at the Amritsar airport in Punjab state over the testing of incoming passengers from the UK, while the Indian state of Maharashtra sent incoming passengers from Britain to institutional quarantine, apart from imposing a night curfew in the state.
The emergency rules, however, evoked an anxious response from the passengers, as they were requested to stay at the airport for six to eight hours. 242 passengers arriving at the Amritsar airport in Punjab were directed to undergo RT-PCR tests for COVID-19.
However, the relatives of the passengers waiting outside the Amritsar airport complained that even those who underwent Covid tests before boarding the flight were also being asked to undergo tests.
The situation was no different in Mumbai.
Passengers arriving in Mumbai said that they should have been told about the institutional quarantine.
The Indian state of Karnataka, too, asked its citizens who have returned in the last fourteen days to undergo the RTPCR test.