India, Iran resume flight operations to bring back 1000 Indians stuck in coronavirus-hit country

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New Delhi: India and Iran have come to a mutual agreement to resume the flight operations to bring back around 1,000 Indians stranded in Iran amid coronavirus outbreak. Meanwhile, the Iranians living in India have gone back to their country in the same flight in which the samples of Indians in Iran were brought to India for a test.

India has prepared a lab in Iran where the samples of the Indians present in the country are being collected and sent to India for the tests. 

The Indians will be brought back to the country if the result of the samples come negative in the tests.

Notably on February 29, 2020, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) suspended all flight operations of Mahan Air and Iran Air to India in view of the coronavirus outbreak.

According to a latest AFP report, there have been 42 new fatalities raising the toll to 237 deaths due to the epidemic in Iran. 

In India, a total of 43 samples have been tested positive out of the 3,003 samples tested for COVID-19.

Earlier on Monday, the Minister of External Affairs S. Jaishankar visited Srinagar and assured all help to the parents of Kashmiri students stranded in the coronavirus-hit Iran. Thousands of students and Shia pilgrims from Kashmir visit Iran every year. The students were to return home in Kashmir for annual holidays but got stuck in Iran after several airlines cancelled their flights from Tehran.

The Minister said that the government was in the process of first evacuating the pilgrims, who are generally older in age and therefore more vulnerable to the coronavirus infection. The students will be evacuated soon after the pilgrims are brought back, he said.

Globally, over 1,10,000 people have been infected and more than 3,800 have died from the virus, the vast majority in China where it first emerged late in 2019.