Air passengers from 9 states will have to show Covid-19 negative reports to enter Bengal

The West Bengal government has made prior RT-PCR tests and a Covid-19 negative report mandatory for flight passengers arriving in Kolkata from nine states.

A statement released by the state government on Friday said that flight passengers coming to West Bengal from five states – Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Chhattisgarh – need to carry Covid-19 negative reports from April 26.

Earlier in February this year, the state had made such reports mandatory for flight passengers coming from four states – Kerala, Maharashtra, Telangana, and Karnataka. The test has to be conducted 72 hours prior to the passengers’ departure.

These are among the ten states that account for over 76 per cent of new Covid-19 cases in India.

West Bengal on Friday reported 12,876 new Covid-19 cases, which is nearly one thousand more than the number of fresh cases registered on Thursday. The state now has nearly 75,000 active cases. At least 59 people died in the last 24 hours.

The Kolkata Metro Rail which used to run 258 trains on weekdays has announced that it will reduce the number of trains to 238 because of fewer passengers from April 26.

“On an average the number of passengers has dropped from around 2.5 lakh per day to around 1.75 lakh per day,” said a Metro Railway official.

State government offices have already returned to the 50% attendance regime because of the alarming rise in Covid-19 cases, while several private companies have also asked their employees to work from home, resulting in fewer passengers.