International Travel Standards: The Union Ministry of Health and Family Affairs announced a new set of International Arrivals guidelines on Thursday. All previous guidelines released in this regard on or after January 20, 2022, shall be superseded by these rules. The recommendations, which detail the process to be followed by international travelers, airlines, and ports of entry, are available here. The guidelines will take effect on February 14, at 12:01 a.m., and will remain in effect until further notice is published, according to the Ministry's decree.

Travelers seeking to visit India must fill out the online self-declaration form available on the Air Suvidha portal with complete and accurate information before their booked flight. Travelers would also be required to fill out the details of their recent 14-day trip on this form.

Additionally, passengers would be required to file either a certificate proving completion of the primary COVID-19 immunization schedule or a negative RT-PCR report for a test taken within 72 hours of the trip's start. They would also need to produce a declaration that the report submitted is authentic, rendering them vulnerable to criminal punishment if it is proved to be faked.

International travelers who want to travel to India also must submit an undertaking to the Indian government through the highly relevant airlines before undertaking their journey. They would have to submit their commitment to comply with any specific instructions issued by the appropriate authorities after they arrive in India, such as with a home or institutional quarantining or self-monitoring of health.

The responsible agents or airlines will continue to supply passengers with Do's and Don'ts together with their tickets so that they can take the required precautions to go to the country. Only those passengers who have completed their Air Suvidha forms and uploaded either their vaccination certificate or their negative RT-PCR are allowed to board, according to the requirements. Only those travelers who are determined to be asymptomatic after undergoing a thermal screening will be permitted to go to India.

The Aarogya Seu app has now been made available to all travelers.

Flights would be required to make statements on precautionary measures to be followed while being in the air, as well as incomparable announcements at airports and in transit. The in-flight crew has also been informed to behave in a COVID-compliant manner for the duration of the flight. Aside from that, any traveler who exhibits COVID-19 symptoms while in flight will be isolated according to protocol.

Flights would also need to make announcements outlining the testing criteria and the persons who will be subjected to them so that arrival airports are not overburdened with passengers.

The physical separation must be maintained during deboarding, and all passengers must go through thermal screening. Passengers would also be required to present their self-declaration forms to the airline.

At the airports, random post-arrival tests would be taken, with 2% of passengers being tested. Airlines would be in charge of identifying passengers who would be subjected to this random testing. These passengers must submit their samples before departing the airport. Any passengers who test positive for COVID-19 will have their samples sent to the INSACOG laboratory network for genome sequencing.

Furthermore, all travelers must monitor their health for 14 days after their arrival.

Passengers going to be coming via seaports or land ports would follow the same process. However, there is currently no online registration option accessible for them, therefore they will have to either submit self-declaration documents to the relevant Union government bodies.