After halting flight operations for months because of the pandemic, India-Russia air travel is finally resuming from January 27. In fact, Russia is also re-starting flights to three more countries. Details below. By Kumar Shree
Russia has finally decided to resume air travel to India, Vietnam, Finland and Qatar. The decision has come after Russia successfully attained a pre-determined criterion. According to this, Russia will resume air travel to these countries only after the selected destinations maintain the figure of 40 or lower new COVID-19 cases per 100,000 of the population for 14 days straight. Not just that, the criterion also mentioned a stringent target of having not more than one per cent of a single-day rise of new cases within these 14 days along with the reproduction number of Coronavirus below one within the last seven days.
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As reported by Russian news agency TASS, the Russian anti-coronavirus crisis centre stated, “After discussing and taking into consideration the epidemiological situation in certain countries, the crisis centre took a decision to resume reciprocal international air communication starting on January 27, 2021, with the following states, namely Vietnam (Moscow-Hanoi, twice a week), India (Moscow-New Delhi, twice a week), Finland (Moscow-Helsinki, twice a week, as well as St Petersburg-Helsinki, twice a week) and Qatar (Moscow-Doha, twice a week).”
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On the other hand, Russia has also suspended all flights to the United Kingdom until February 1, as the number of Coronavirus cases there is on a steady rise. Earlier, Russia had suspended all air services to and from Britain from December 22, 2020, to January 12, 2021, after the new Coronavirus strain was identified.
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