125 Passengers of A Chartered Flight From Italy Tested Positive For Covid-19 At Amritsar Airport

As many as 125 out of 179 passengers of an international chartered flight from Italy have tested positive for Covid-19 on arrival at Amritsar airport. VK Seth the Director of Amritsar Airport has confirmed the news.

VK Seth said that all the passengers were tested upon their arrival at Amritsar airport as per the protocol and found Covid-19 positive

Punjab | 125 passengers of an international chartered flight from Italy have tested positive for Covid-19 on arrival at Amritsar airport pic.twitter.com/YGBpArLC0T

— ANI (@ANI) January 6, 2022

“A charter flight flew from Italy to Amritsar with 179 passengers. Of them, 160 were tested on arrival & 125 were found positive. The remaining 19 passengers were children and infants and exempt from testing. It was not an Air India flight” Seth Added.

Earlier, a lot of media reports claimed that it was an Air India flight but later the airline said that these reports are wrong and baseless as of now it does not operate any flight from Rome.

“Several Media houses have reported that Passengers of Air India flight from Rome to Amritsar have been tested covid-19 positive. This is wrong and baseless. Air India doesn’t operate any flight from Rome currently.” said Air India in a tweet.

#FlyAI : Several Media houses has reported that Passengers of Air India flight from Rome to Amritsar have been tested covid positive. This is wrong and baseless. Air India doesn’t operate any flight from Rome currently.

— Air India (@airindiain) January 6, 2022

Amritsar airport director VK Seth clarified that YU-661 was a chartered flight, and not operated by Air India.

The flight, operated by Portuguese company EuroAtlantic Airways, landed in Amritsar around 1:30 pm on Wednesday

Since Italy is categorized as an ‘At-Risk’ country by the Union health ministry, the RT-PCR test was conducted for 160 passengers. The remaining 19 were children or infants and were hence exempt from the test.