New Delhi: India will begin flights on Thursday to bring home some 400,000 citizens stranded overseas by travel restrictions due to the coronavirus pandemic, prompting some worries over the risk that imported infections could fuel contagion in the country.
India’s coronavirus cases totaled 49,390 as of Wednesday, of whom 1,694 people had died, and there is still no sign of the curve in new cases flattening despite a stringent, weeks-long lockdown in the world’s second most populous country.
But, responding to the distress among India’s huge diaspora, the government has asked national carrier Air India to provide aircraft to bring back Indians who want to return from the Middle East, Singapore, the United Kingdom and the United States.
