‘Pandemonium’: Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, Harsh Goenka on chaotic scenes at Delhi airport

Biocon Executive Chairperson Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw and RPG Enterprises chairman Harsh Goenka shared pictures of long queues at the Delhi International airport due to the compulsory COVID-19 testing on arrival. The corporate honcho also fired a salvo at the Government of India’s Aarogya Setu app and said that it should not hold passengers at airport.

“Pics: Not a train station. This is Delhi airport under omicron rules- it’s obvious that the airport testing upon arrival will cause pandemonium [and] a transmission hotspot – but who’s listening? With Aarogya Setu app, you should not hold passengers at airport,” Mazumdar-Shaw tweeted.

Meanwhile, the Union Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia called a high-level meeting of officials from Delhi Airport, AAI, immigration and COVID-19 testing lab company to take cognisance of the chaotic situation at Delhi Airport due to mismanagement of crowd. During this meeting, Scindia directed Delhi Airport officials to implement strategies for crowd management at the airport. 

Earlier this week, the Delhi airport issued an updated primer of guidelines in the wake of the Omicron variant. As per these guidelines, all passengers have to submit their self-declaration form on the Delhi International Airport’s Air Suvidha portal. “Effective from December 1, 2021, all international passengers arriving in Delhi airport from at-risk countries have to self-declare, a negative RT-PCR report must be conducted and uploaded not before 72 hours prior to your boarding in the Air Suvidha portal. The passengers will also have to share travel details of the last 14 days,” as per the updated guidelines.

Children under the age of 5 years have been exempt from both the pre and post-arrival RT-PCR testing. If symptoms arise in case of children, parents and/or guardians need to contact a government facility and take treatment as per standard protocols.

It further states that passengers have to wait at the airport for collecting the results of their RT-PCR or Rapid PCR tests before leaving the airport premises or taking a connecting flight. Countries that have been classified as ‘at-risk’ nations are the UK, South Africa, Brazil, Israel, China, Botswana, Bangladesh, Mauritius, New Zealand, Singapore, Zimbabwe and Hong Kong.

“Travellers from countries excluding those countries at risk will be allowed to leave the airport and shall self-monitor their health for 14 days’ post arrival. A sub-section (2 percent of the total passengers) shall undergo post-arrival testing at random at the airport on arrival,” the Delhi airport’s updated guidelines noted.

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