Amid the Omicron scare, the Civil Aviation and Health Ministry on Tuesday mandated contactless self-declaration at Air Suvidha Portal which helps the centre in contact tracing. The implementation of the Air Suvidha has been mandated to provide hassle-free, queue free, and convenient air travel to all international passengers arriving in India, the Government said in a release.

Air Suvidha portal has already assisted 2,51,210 passengers from December 1-5, since updating the new travel guidelines on November 30, 2021. Furthermore, the government informed that over one crore passengers have benefited from the Air Suvidha portal since its launch in August 2020.

The portal has been strengthened to accommodate travel guidelines issued on November 30. Air Suvidha portal developed by Civil Aviation Ministry aids passengers in providing their details of travel and final stay along with RT PCR, vaccination status etc.

To ensure the necessary prevention of the Omicron variant, the exemption forms from the Air Suvidha portal has been discontinued, and filling of the details have been made compulsory for all international passengers arriving in India. All international passengers are mandated to declare their current health status prior to boarding on the Air Suvidha Portal along with the required documents - a copy of passport, PCR negative certificate from a test conducted within 72 hours of departure and the vaccination certificate. For immigration, the copy received in e-mail is essential on arrival in India and has to be verified at the APHO counter.

At risk applications

All applications from ‘at risk’ countries are marked with H and red band and others are green. This helps in smooth arrival segregation and processing. The application also considers countries visited in the last 14 days to highlight ‘at risk’ applications. This field is also made into a multi-select drop-down option for standardization. Standardization of fields by providing drop-down list eg.,. district and state, for address has been done. There is an updated FAQ list and customer care link along with the latest advisory at the start of the portal. For ‘At Risk’ countries, passengers are advised to pre-book their test on arrival test and the link to the respective testing facility is provided to the passengers on SDF submission.

Meanwhile, all international passengers are mandated to follow these measures arriving/transiting from countries at-risk - submit self-declaration form on Air Suvidha portal; upload negative RT-PCR report (conducted within 72 hours before the journey); Post-arrival Covid-19 test at arriving airport (self-paid); home quarantine for seven days; re-test on the 8th day and if negative, self-health monitoring for next seven days.

Countries from where travellers would need to follow additional measures on arrival in India, including post-arrival testing (as updated as on December 6 include: Countries in Europe including the UK, South Africa, Brazil, Botswana, China, Ghana, Mauritius, New Zealand, Zimbabwe, Singapore, Tanzania, Hong Kong, Israel.

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