Centre issues guidelines for domestic air,rail, bus travel; states to decide on quarantine

A day ahead of domestic flights resuming partial operations, the Centre on Sunday, has issued a list of guidelines for any kind of domestic travel (air/rail/inter-state bus). The 12 guidelines advises downloading Aarogya Setu app, mandates face masks during travel, sanitisation of airports, bus terminals, railway stations, thermal screening. It also allows states to develop their own protocol for quarantine and isolation.

Domestic flights to resume, here are every state's SOPs & Centre's guidelines for flyers

Centre issues domestic travel guidelines

The guidelines state that asymptomatic passengers are permitted to travel, but will be advised to self-monitor for 14 days. Meanwhile, symptomatic patients will be nearest COVID health facility, with mild symptomatic patients given the option of home quarantine - if they test negative. The Centre has also advised asymptomatic people to inform district surveillance officer if they develop symptoms.

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Domestic travel in India

The Centre flagged Shramik trains across the nation on May 1 to transport stranded migrants to their home states. As of Saturday, 36 lakh migrants have travelled till date in over 1500 trains.  The Centre has also allowed states to ply buses to transport stranded migrants and also announced the commencement of 200 additional trains from June 1 for interstate travel for the general public.

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Apart from this, the respective state governments, noted celebrities, NGOs have arranged buses to transport these migrant labourers across the nation. Most states have allowed inter and intrastate bus travel, following SOPs for social distancing as the Centre further eased restriction in its fourth phase of lockdown till May 31.

On Wednesday, after announcing the commencement of domestic air flights, Union Civil aviation minister Hardeep Singh Puri announced that the domestic flight operations shall be restricted to 1/3rd capacity of the approved summer schedule 2020 alsong with a new fare limit to make flights affordable. He said that for this fare structure sets a minimum and maximum level for three months - for e.g. Delhi-Mumbai flight fare will be set Rs 3500 and the maximum level at Rs 10000. While the Centre has not mandated 14-day quarantine for domestic air travel passengers, several states like Punjab, Assam, Jammu-Kashmir, Kerala, Karnataka, Goa, Meghalaya,  Chhatisgarh, Andhra Pradesh have mandated 7-14 day quarantine for incoming air passengers - some have extended it to rail as well as bus passengers.

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