125 Passengers Test Covid-19 Positive on Air India's Italy-Amritsar Flight

On Thursday, Airport director VK Seth said that 125 passengers of an international chartered flight from Italy to Amritsar have tested positive for Covid-19 on arrival at Amritsar airport. There were 179 passengers on the Italy-Amritsar flight including 19 children, on the flight from Milan that arrived in Amritsar at around 1.30 pm. As per the officials, "the flight made a technical halt at Tbilisi (Georgia)." Reportedly, it was operated by EuroAtlantic Airways, a Portuguese company. 

Rising cases of Covid-19 

Meanwhile, the Center has urged nine states and union territories to intensify Covid-19 testing to ensure that infected people do not spread the virus to others. In a letter to Tamil Nadu, Punjab, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Mizoram, Meghalaya, Jammu and Kashmir and Bihar, Additional Secretary, Union Health Ministry, Aarti Ahuja pointed to a significant decline in Covid-19 testing amid rising cases and positivity rates and said that it is a "cause for concern". 

In the absence of adequate testing, it is impossible to determine the exact level of infection in the community, Ahuja said in the letter dated January 5. However, on Thursday. the country has  witnessed its biggest single-day jump of 495 Omicron cases, taking the total number of infections of the new version of Covid-19 to 2,630, as per the data from the Union Health Ministry.