New Covid variant: Delhi L-G instructs officers to prepare for any emergency

Delhi Lieutenant Governor Anil Baijal

Delhi Lt Governor Anil Baijal instructed senior officials to ensure strict adherence to Covid appropriate behaviour at public places and preparedness at hospitals to deal with any emergency situation, official sources said on Saturday.

The Delhi Disaster Management Authority (DDMA), in its meeting on Monday, is likely to take a call on RT-PCR testing of passengers deboarding from international flights, and quarantining of passengers from South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Hong kong and other countries where a new variant of Covid has been reported, they said.

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The meeting chaired by the Lt Governor will be attended by experts and civil aviation ministry representatives, sources said. Earlier, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to stop flights coming to India from those countries which are affected by the new variant of the coronavirus.

In a tweet, he emphasised that the country had "recovered" from the COVID-19 pandemic with "great difficulty". "I urge Hon'ble PM to stop flights from those countries which are affected by new variant. With great difficulty, our country has recovered from Corona. We shud do everything possible to prevent this new variant from entering India," Kejriwal tweeted.

Modi was on Saturday briefed about the new 'Omicron' variant of the coronavirus, and he asked officials to review the plans to ease international travel restrictions in light of the "emerging new evidence". The new variant of COVID-19, feared to have a high amount of spike mutations unseen before, has been detected in South Africa, with authorities there confirming 22 positive cases associated with it on Thursday.