Coronavirus Omicron India LIVE Updates | Bali to welcome first international tourist flight amid cautious reopening
Indonesia’s holiday island of Bali will welcome its first direct flight carrying foreign tourists for nearly two years on Thursday, but just a handful of visitors will be on board to enter strict quarantine on arrival. A Garuda Indonesia flight from Tokyo is scheduled to arrive in Bali in the afternoon, with six foreigners and six Indonesians aboard, said Ida Ayu Indah Yustikarini, an official at the Bali Government Tourism Office. Though the island officially opened to visitors from China, New Zealand, Japan and a few other countries in mid-October, there have been no direct non-cargo flights since then. The six foreign tourists arriving from Tokyo were travelling using business visas since the new rules for tourists were not ready when they applied to come, said Yustikarini. Indonesia has said restarting international flights is intended to boost Bali’s battered tourism sector, which usually accounts for 54% of its economy. Known for its surfing, temples, waterfalls and nightlife, Bali drew 6.2 million foreign visitors in 2019, the year before COVID-19 struck. The entire country recorded just 1.6 million foreign visitors last year, down 61.57% from 2020. However, Indonesia is maintaining much stricter quarantine requirements than Southeast Asian neighbours Thailand, which resumed quarantine-free entry for vaccinated visitors from Tuesday and the Philippines, which will do the same from Feb. 10. Vaccinated tourists to Bali must quarantine between five and seven days at hotels or on vessels offshore.
Bali’s slow reopening comes as Indonesia has been seeing a steady increase in COVID-19 cases, primarily driven by the Omicron variant. The country on Wednesday reported nearly 18,000 infections, the highest tally since August. Singapore Airlines said last week it would resume flights to Bali from Singapore starting on Feb. 16. Garuda also said on Wednesday it had started a cargo flight from Bali to Japan, carrying 17 tonnes of goods including tuna fish. Most Asian airlines have relied heavily on cargo revenue during the pandemic due to low passenger numbers.
Coronavirus Omicron India LIVE Updates | Andaman & Nicobar records 18 new COVID-19 cases
Andaman and Nicobar Islands reported a dip in new COVID-19 cases, as 18 fresh infections were recorded, four less than the previous day, pushing the tally in the union territory to 9,844, a health official said on Thursday. The COVID-19 death toll in the archipelago remained at 129 as no fresh fatality was reported in the last 24 hours, he said. The union territory now has 290 active COVID-19 cases, while 9,425 people have recovered from the disease so far, the official said. Of the 290 active cases, only nine patients are admitted in hospital while 281 are in home quarantine. The administration has so far tested 6,85,499 samples for COVID-19 and the cumulative test positivity rate is 1.44 per cent. A total of 6,04,599 beneficiaries have been inoculated with COVID-19 vaccine so far.
Coronavirus Omicron India LIVE Updates | SC refuses to postpone GATE examination scheduled for February 5
The Supreme Court on Thursday refused to postpone the Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering Exam (GATE), which is scheduled to be held on February 5, in view of Covid restrictions in many parts of the country. A bench of Justices DY Chandrachud, Surya Kant and Vikram Nath said that postponing GATE just 48 hours before the scheduled examination would result in chaos and uncertainty, and it cannot play with the career of students, who have prepared for it. The bench said that it is a matter of academic policy as to when the examination should be held and the court cannot enter this arena. It noted that nine lakh students are to appear in the examination and around 20,000 students have signed an online petition for postponing the examination. The students have prepared for it and the court cannot play with the career of the students by postponing the examination, the bench observed. On Wednesday, the top court had agreed to list the plea seeking postponement of GATE.
Coronavirus Omicron India LIVE Updates | Schools reopen for classes 8-12 in West Bengal with COVID protocols
Visuals from Carmel High School in Kolkata
Coronavirus Omicron India LIVE Updates | Arunachal Pradesh reports 237 fresh COVID-19 cases, two new fatalities
Arunachal Pradesh’s COVID-19 tally rose to 62,893 after 237 more people tested positive for the infection, while two new fatalities pushed the death toll to 290, a senior health official said on Thursday. A 61-year-old woman and a 40-year-old man, both from the Capital Complex Region, died at the Dedicated Covid Hospital at Chimpu, near here, on Tuesday due to Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome with Covid Pneumonia, State Surveillance Officer (SSO) Dr Lobsang Jampa said. The state currently has 2,375 active COVID-19 cases, while 60,228 people have recuperated from the disease thus far in the state, including 357 on Wednesday, the official said. The COVID-19 recovery rate in the state marginally improved to 95.76 per cent from 95.55 per cent the previous day, he said.
Coronavirus Omicron India LIVE Updates | ?Shikhar Dhawan, six others test positive for Covid ahead of India’s series against West Indies
Four team India players — Shikhar Dhawan, Ruturaj Gaikwad, Shreyas Iyer and Navdeep Saini — have tested positive for the coronavirus ahead of the series with West Indies in Ahmedabad on February 6, the Board of Control for Cricket in India said on February 2. Apart from the four players, fielding Coach T Dilip, Security Liaison Officer B Lokesh and the team’s sports massage therapist Rajeev Kumar have tested positive for the infection. “The All-India Senior Selection Committee has added Mayank Agarwal to India’s ODI squad after seven members, including three players of Team India (Senior Men) tested positive for COVID-19 following three rounds of RT-PCR testing,” BCCI Honorary Secretary Jay Shah said in a statement. Team India members had been asked to reach to Ahmedabad on January 31 for the three-match ODI and T20I series against the West Indies.
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Coronavirus Omicron India LIVE Updates | ?1,72,433 new COVID cases in 24 hours; active cases down by 5%
India has recorded a total of 1,72,433 new COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours, tad higher than the daily cases registered on February 2 but the ongoing wave continued to shrink with a big drop in active coronavirus cases. The number of active cases in India on February 2 was 16,21,603 which has come down to 15,33,921 in the last 24-hour period. In the country so far, there are a total of 4,18,03,318 COVID cases and 4,97975 deaths have been confirmed. Of the 1,008 deaths registered on February 3, 500 were from Kerala alone which also reported 335 backlog deaths. Kerala, at 165 fresh deaths in a day, also reported the highest fatalities due to the infectious disease, followed by Karnataka which reported 81 new deaths.
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Coronavirus Omicron India LIVE Updates | ?Jharkhand’s COVID-19 tally rises to 4,29,773 with 601 fresh cases
Jharkhand on Thursday reported 601 new COVID-19 cases, 21 less than the previous day, with the tally mounting to 4,29,773, a health department bulletin said. The COVID-19 death toll rose to 5,306 as three more persons – one from capital Ranchi and two from Saraikela district succumbed to the infection in the last 24 hours, it said. East Singhbhum district registered the highest number of new infections at 214, followed by the state capital Ranchi at 177 and Simdega at 36. Jharkhand now has 3,781 active COVID-19 cases, while 1,189 people recuperated from the disease in the last 24 hours, taking the total number of recoveries to 4,20,686, it said.
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