- Friday, April 26, 2024
By: Shubham Ghosh
INDIAN foreign secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla on Saturday (24) said that he has asked the United Kingdom to review its travel ban on visitors from India.
In April, Britain added India to its travel ‘red list’ amid concerns over the Delta variant of the coronavirus. Under this list, visitors are banned from travelling to the UK. Also British citizens returning to their country are required to undergo a compulsory 10-day hotel quarantine on arrival.
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“I briefed them [UK officials] on the Covid-19 situation in India,” Shringla said during his visit to London. “I pointed out that France had cleared visitors from India without quarantine, if they are double vaccinated and have a negative test. The United States has upgraded India in the travel scheme, encouraged the UK to do the same and they took note of it.”
Shringla reached the UK on a two-day visit starting Friday (23) to further India’s bilateral ties with the UK as per Roadmap 2030, a 10-year diplomatic coordination strategy between New Delhi and London, India’s ministry of external affairs said.
The foreign secretary said the Narendra Modi government was “constantly vigilant” and taking precautions to avoid a possible third wave of the Covid pandemic. “Mumbai, Delhi, big cities are practically free of Covid,” he said.
India witnessed a devastating second wave of the pandemic in April and May which had left its healthcare system in a shambles.
On Saturday, no deaths from the disease were reported in Delhi. The positivity rate has also dipped significantly in the city to 0.09 per cent from a peak of 10 per cent in April. With 66 new infections, the tally since the start of the pandemic in January last year went up to 1,435,844.
In Mumbai, India’s financial capital, cases rose to 733,757 with 423 new cases. The city’s recovery rate improved to 97 per cent and the case doubling time was at more than 1,200 days, according to the city’s civic authorities.
