A special Air India flight with 263 Indian evacuees from Italy landed at the IGI Airport in the national capital on Sunday. All the evacuees will be thermally scanned and then taken to the ITBP Chhawla Quarantine Facility in Delhi. The special Boeing 787-Dreamline, with 12 crew members, departed from Delhi at 2.30pm on Saturday and left Rome on Sunday morning.
A week before, over 450 Indians, including students, stranded in coronavirus-hit Iran and Italy were brought back by two flights and quarantined at separate facilities. A total of 218 Indians, mostly students, from Milan landed last Sunday. More than 230 Indians brought back from Iran reached New Delhi at about 3:15 AM and were quarantined at the Indian Army Wellness Centre in Jaisalmer. They had arrived in Delhi on a Mahan Air flight from Tehran and were ferried by two Air India flights to Jaisalmer.
The same week, the Centre had also banned all international flights from the country for one week from Sunday. “No scheduled international commercial passenger aircraft shall be allowed to land in India from March 22, 2020, for one week,” the government said in a statement. “As such, no incoming scheduled international commercial passenger aircraft shall be allowed to disembark its passengers on Indian soil.”