Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA) was always left in all mess and the scene was really chaotic to witness as the news of new international air travel guidelines was out and was strictly followed by everyone in the airport.
Nothing came up with new guidelines in order to not let spread of the newly found Omicron which is the new Covid-19 variant. Thus many airport authorities said on Monday that testing capacity has been updated. The team has been functioning in order to have the public ensure the smooth flow of the international arrival process and they can also make sure if there are any cases found or not. “We have updated testing capacity at international arrival with deployment of 120 Rapid PCR machines, taking hourly capacity to 500-600 per hour with a Turn Around Time of less than 60 mins. Further, there is provision for approx. 500 RTPCR tests/hr. This additional capacity will further smoothen the international arrival process,” the official Delhi Airport handle wrote on their official Twitter handle.
The ICMR team designs a kit to detect the Omicron variant in 2 hours and the Delhi airport launches an e-boarding facility too. the facility was released so that the chances of having long queues can be cut short and also it helps in maintaining social distance. On Saturday, the Delhi International Airport Limited (DIAL) stated that 20 dedicated counters have been set up at the country’s busiest airport. The team has been updated so that they can ensure a faster testing process for passengers coming to the country from different countries classified by the Union health ministry as ‘high-risk’ for the Omicron variant. Many visitors have been witnessed in IGIA since December 1, when the new guidelines kicked in. The process of testing for several passengers is reported to go on for as long as six hours.
The airport has been looking forward to implementing better crowd management plans and approximately two dozen cases of variant B.1.1.529 have been confirmed in India, including one in the national capital. The coronavirus variant, which was classified as a Variant of Concern (VoC) by the World Health Organization (WHO) on November 26, named ‘Omicron,’ has now led to delay in resumption of international regular commercial passenger flights. The flights were scheduled for December 15. Since the news of coronavirus was out the importance has been updating itself for increasing the testing processes and now its new variant is detected which has worsened the case a bit more and the pressure on the international airport team is much higher right now.
Thorough checking of all the passengers who have been across different countries and reaching to the Delhi international airport has begin and thanks to all the design latest kits which has smoothen the process of testing so that the passengers would not have to wait for a very long time and can get going by maintaining the social distances and the airport facility.
