The airport authorities said that as per revised guidelines of West Bengal government, "only international passengers arriving by flights from UK to Kolkata Airport shall undergo 100% Covid test (90%RAT and 10% RT-PCR) on arrival. All other guidelines, however, remains the same, as per latest guidelines of the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare."
An airport official confirmed that from 3rd January 2022, all passengers coming from other ‘non at risk’ countries by international flights to West Bengal will have to mandatorily undergo a test on arrival at their cost.
He said that even as the difference in the total number of cases swings between 30-50 per day, the number of RT-PCR tests is on the rise in the state. He said that the Test Positivity Rate of the state is stable at 1.2 per cent.
The 38 Kerala students had arrived in Karnataka to write nursing exams a week ago. Though they had come with Covid negative reports but the Hassan district authorities conducted Covid tests on the students.
The VRDL had also become the first laboratory in the state to cross the 1-lakh mark in August last year.
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Tests for the acute encephalitis syndrome, the detection of viral load of Hepatitis B and Hepatitis C are conducted through the RT-PCR method under the National Hepatitis Control Programme there.
The Union health ministry on 21 August had claimed that India had been conducting 580 tests per day per million population, while Bengal remained far behind at 365 tests, and figured in the bottom five states in terms of testing per day.
Although the Cabinet had decided to ramp up testing to 40,000 a day, testing came down to 8,794 on Sunday. The state was testing around 20,000 per day last week. On 17 August 19,579 tests were conducted, according to today’s health bulletin.
Effective implementation of this approach has led to ramping up the testing capacity across the country and facilitated widespread COVID testing of people.
