Coronavirus Lockdown - First Flights To Bring Back Indians Stranded Abroad Land In Kerala

Thiruvananthapuram: Two special flights with 363 Indians from Abu Dhabi and Dubai landed in Kerala on Thursday as part of India's massive operation to bring back some of the hundreds of thousands of citizens stuck abroad due to coronavirus restrictions.

The first Air India Express flight had taken off at 5:07 pm (local time) from Abu Dhabi for Kochi. A second Dubai-Kozhikode flight took off at 5:46 pm (local time) as part of the massive repatriation exercise named ''Vande Bharat Mission'' that will use passenger jets and naval ships.

All passengers have undergone coronavirus anti-body tests at the airport before departure and will be quarantined for seven days at a government facility, authorities have said.

They will then undergo the more reliable RT-PCR test and if negative, they will be allowed to self-quarantine at home for the remaining seven days. If they are positive, they will be moved to hospitals.

Passengers flying in from places without any test will be kept in institutional quarantine for all 14 days.

All passengers who are arriving will undergo multi-level screenings including thermal checks. Once cleared they will be seated in buses that will take them to their home districts where they will be quarantined.

Pregnant women and seniors have been exempted from institutional quarantine but will have to follow strict quarantine measures at home.

The central government had banned all incoming international flights in late March as it imposed one of the world's strictest virus lockdowns, leaving vast numbers of workers and students stranded.

Till now, it had resisted evacuations, given the logistical and safety nightmare of bringing back and quarantining returning citizens.

On Monday, the government announced plans to begin a phased repatriation of its citizens stranded abroad from May 7 in the biggest exercise since national airline Air India flew back 1.7 lakh Indians during the first Gulf War.

The government said that Air India will operate 64 flights from May 7 to May 13 to bring back around 15,000 Indian nationals stranded abroad due to the lockdown. Those taking the special flights will be charged around Rs 50,000 from Europe and Rs 1 lakh from the US.

More than 3 lakh Indians have requested a flight home. The consulate in Dubai said that it alone had received almost 2 lakh applications, appealing on Twitter for "patience and cooperation" as India undertakes the "massive task" of repatriation.

The oil-rich Gulf is reliant on the cheap labour of millions of foreigners -- mostly from India, Pakistan, Nepal and Sri Lanka -- many of whom live in squalid camps far from the region's showy skyscrapers and malls.

But coronavirus and the devastating economic impact of the pandemic has left many workers sick and others unemployed, unpaid and at the mercy of sometimes unscrupulous employers.

Other flights will leave Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines, as well as London, San Francisco, New York, Chicago and Washington. Naval warships will be used to bring back Indians stuck in West Asia and the Maldives.

This comes as a relief as migrant workers across the country have been requesting to be taken home and transport arrangements be made for them