India to require negative Covid tests from Asian visitors

Healthcare professionals across India have been taking part in anti-Covid drills, and travel rules for several Asian countries including China have been toughened in the wake of Beijing's decision to end the policy of widespread quarantine.

Indian hospitals stocked up on oxygen, beds and medicines as the world logged 11 million new Covid infections last week – eight percent more than the number of cases reported one week earlier.

Delhi Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya inspected state facilities which crumpled during previous Covid surges in 2021 and 2022, leaving millions dead.

“Prime Minister Narendra Modi has asked us to make sure there isn't a Covid surge,” he said, adding that visitors from China, Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Thailand will have to produce negative test results from Sunday.

“After landing in India, they will undergo thermal screening and we have issued orders for them to be quarantined if found positive,” the minister added.

He separately told parliament that random testing of two percent of international travellers has resumed at Indian airports.

The random tests were called off in November as the epidemic situation improved in India.

The minister said there were no immediate plans to halt flights from countries where new cases have been reported, in line with some experts that travel curbs may not be the best way to stave off another surge.

No hasty steps

Rajeev Jayadevan from India's largest union of physicians said the country should expect a fall-out as a result of the change in Chinese policy.

“We must also remember that India is 10 months past the last major wave and we are facing holidays, we are facing travels, with winter conditions and people are going to gather indoors so this might be the perfect setting for another wave to happen.”

Jayadevan cautioned that a new variant of the Covid virus was at present gnawing into China's largely unvaccinated elderly population.

Prominent vilogist Sarnam Singh also warned India against hasty decisions on another period of lockdown.

“We must not panic because any restriction on travel will really hamper our economy,” Singh said.

“Also we are much better equipped now; we have efficacious vaccines; oxygen, and hospital beds and then we have the protocols in place this time,” the scientist added.

But Rajib Dasgupta of a national Covid task force called on India to speed up domestic healthcare refurbishing projects.

“Testing in India has sharply fallen and the number of vaccination centres has also drastically declined and finally to facilitate all of these we really need to reinvent our crisis communication systems,” the scientist said.

India has reported 44.7 million cases and 531,000 Covid deaths but agencies such as WHO suggest excess virus deaths may be 10 times higher than the official tally.

Chinese jigsaw

Medical administrator Sanjeev Bagai also warned of possible repercussions as China ends three years of draconian quarantine rules for arriving passengers and now offers to open up its borders in January.

The concessions led to an alarming spike in Covid cases which swamped hospitals and sparked drug shortages in China.

“I think China is in a precarious position,” Bagai said as Beijing backed off from its harsh “Zero Covid” strategy under rare public protest in November.

But the United States and Japan say they too may not grant free access to visitors from China citing unclear data and opaque state public health policies.

Western researchers say China could be grappling with 800 million affected people by winter's end.