125 passengers of international chartered flight test Covid positive at Amritsar airport

As many as 125 passengers of a chartered international flight between Italy-Amritsar have tested positive for Covid-19, a senior airport official said today.

As many as 125 passengers of an international chartered flight have tested positive for Covid-19, a senior airport official said today.

The passengers were tested upon their arrival at Amritsar airport as per the protocol, Airport Director VK Seth said.

Officials said there were a total of 179 passengers on the charter flight YU-661 that landed at the Amritsar airport at around 1.30 PM on Wednesday.

Since Italy is one of the "at risk" countries according to the Union Health Ministry, all eligible passengers -- 160 in this case -- were tested for COVID-19 and 125 of them were found to be positive, they mentioned.

Out of total 179 passengers, 19 were children or infant so they were exempt from on-arrival RT-PCR testing, they said. The charter flight between Milan in Italy and Amritsar in Punjab was operated by Portuguese company EuroAtlantic Airways, they mentioned.

Earlier, news agency ANI had tweeted that passengers who were tested positive were onboard an Air India flight, a report denied by the national airliner in a tweet.