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International passengers, who arrive at the six major airports – Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai, Chennai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad, from nations that are ‘at-risk’ of the Omicron variant – will need to mandatorily pre-book RT-PCR tests. The rule, issued by the Ministry of Civil Aviation through an office memorandum, will come into effect from December 20.

It also applies to those who have visited these countries over the last 14 days and are now entering India through any other airport.

The Air Suvidha portal is being modified accordingly to stabilise the system to ensure that passengers do not have problems pre-booking or making payments, and it will be implemented across these six airports in the first phase. The DGCA has been asked to issue an advisory to airlines to check mandatory pre-booking of their passengers before boarding the flight.

If passengers have any difficulty in pre-booking, then they “may not be denied boarding”, but it will be the responsibility of the airlines to identify and accompany the passenger(s) to the registration counter at the airport.

Countries on the ‘at-risk’ list include all European nations, including the UK, South Africa, Brazil, Botswana, China, Ghana, Mauritius, New Zealand, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Hong Kong and Israel.

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