Air travel resumes with hiccups, schools to open in July as India reports 10th highest Covid-19 cases in world

The nationwide tally of Covid-19 cases neared 1.40 lakh on Monday after a record number of nearly 7,000 people tested positive for the deadly virus infection during the day.

The count has quadrupled since May 1 when special trains began ferrying migrants back to their native places, followed within a week by special flights to bring back Indians and expatriates from abroad.

India’s Covid-19 death toll has also crossed the 4,000-mark, marking an over three-fold increase since May 1, while the total number of active cases has more than tripled too in this time period. The number of recovered Covid-19 patients has also grown over six-fold since then to nearly 60,000 now.

DOMESTIC FLIGHT SERVICES RESUME AFTER 2 MONTHS

Domestic air travel resumed on Monday after two months even as a number of states were unenthusiastic about opening up their airports in view of rising Covid-19 cases causing around 630 flights to be cancelled.

According to aviation industry sources, around 630 domestic flights of Monday were cancelled due to the Centre’s Sunday night announcement that there would be no flights in West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh, and limited operations at major airports such as Mumbai, Chennai and Hyderabad.