Britain’s Heathrow Airport has refused to allow flights from India to land in view of the alarming surge in Covid-19 cases in the country.
Britain is likely to add India to its “red list” of locations from where travel is banned because of the high incidence of Covid-19.
The British government decided to take the move after over 100 cases of the Covid-19 Indian variant was detected, a report stated.
British health minister Matt Hancock said that his government had to take the tough decision to not allow any person who is not an UK or Irish resident to enter the UK id he had been to India in the past 10 days.
The Heathrow Airport had earlier refused to permit extra flights from India due to concerns about queues at passport control.
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The airport also said that it did not want to aggravate the situation by increasing the pressures at the border by allowing more passengers to fly in.
A total of 2,95,041 people tested positive for Covid-19 on Wednesday – the biggest daily rise reported in any country so far.
This has greatly crippled the country’s healthcare system. There is also an acute shortage of oxygen in several hospitals in the country.