West Bengal suspends flights from UK to Kolkata

Dhaka: The West Bengal government has suspended all flights from the United Kingdom to Kolkata Airport effective January 3.

Also, according to an official statement, all passengers from other non at-risk countries to West Bengal have to undergo a mandatory Covid test upon arrival at their own expense.

The airlines will randomly select 10 per cent of the passengers for Covid RT-PCR testing and the remaining 90 per cent of the passengers of a flight will take Rapid Antigen Test on arrival.

If arriving passengers test positive in antigen test, they will have to further undergo a mandatory RT-PCR test, said guidelines issued by the government.

Passengers can pre-book the Covid test before boarding to save some waiting time on arrival.

Earlier, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee expressed concerns over detecting most omicron cases among people coming on flights from the UK.

"It's a fact that the omicron carriers are coming via international flights. The Centre must decide on imposing restrictions on flights from countries where omicron cases are high," she claimed.