Visitors coming to India from China, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Thailand will no longer be required to furnish a pre-departure Covid test report and upload a self-health declaration on the ‘Air Suvidha’ portal from February 13.

The government has taken this decision as these countries have been witnessing a sustained and significant decline in trajectory of COVID-19 cases in the last four weeks, Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan said.

In a letter sent to his counterpart in the Ministry of Civil Aviation Rajiv Bansal, Bhushan on Thursday said his ministry is updating its ‘Guidelines for International Arrivals’ in view of the decline in coronavirus cases.

Further, according to the World Health Organisation’s latest situational update on COVID-19, a decline of 89 per cent in the number of newly confirmed cases in the past 28 days has been noted globally as compared to 28 days prior to that, he said. India continues to witness a declining trajectory of coronavirus cases, with less than 100 new cases a day being reported.

“In view of the above, this ministry is updating its ‘Guidelines for International Arrivals’, and dropping the existing requirements of pre-departure COVID-19 testing and uploading of Self-Health Declaration on Ministry of Civil Aviation’s ‘Air Suvidha’ portal applicable for international travellers coming from/via China, Singapore, Hong Kong, Republic of Korea, Thailand and Japan,” the letter said.

In order to monitor infections due to mutated variants of SARS-CoV-2 among international travellers to India, the present exercise of random testing of two per cent travellers irrespective of their country of origin upon arrival in India shall continue.

The Ministry of Health, as a part of its proactive yet graded public health response to COVID-19 management, has been updating ‘Guidelines for International Arrivals’ from time to time.

New Delhi, Feb 10: The Supreme Court will now function with its maximum strength of 34 judges, with two high court chief justices being elevated to the top court on Friday.
Law Minister Kiren Rijiju took to Twitter to announce the fresh appointments to the top court and extended his best wishes to them.
Justice Rajesh Bindal, Chief Justice, Allahabad HC and Justice Aravind Kumar, Chief Justice, Gujarat HC are likely to take oath as judges of the Supreme Court in the next two days, sources aware of the process of appointing judges to the higher judiciary said.
Once they take oath, the top court will achieve its full strength of 34 judges, including the Chief Justice of India.
Their names were recommended by the Supreme Court Collegium on January 31.
The Department of Justice in the Union law ministry issued separate notifications announcing their appointments.
Last week, five judges were appointed to the Supreme Court.
While all six members of the Collegium, led by CJI DY Chandrachud, were unanimous in recommending the name of Justice Bindal, Justice K M Joseph had reservation on the name of Justice Kumar, according to a resolution uploaded on the apex court website.
On Saturday last, Justice Pankaj Mithal, Chief Justice, Rajasthan High Court; Justice Sanjay Karol, Chief Justice, Patna High Court; Justice P V Sanjay Kumar, Chief Justice, Manipur High Court; Justice Ahsanuddin Amanullah, Judge, Patna High Court; and Justice Manoj Misra, Judge, Allahabad High Court , were elevated to the apex court.
Between May and July this year, six judges of the apex court will demit office upon attaining the age of 65 years.
The retirement age of high court judges is 62.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived at the Uttar Pradesh Global Investors Summit 2023 in Lucknow on Friday. He inaugurated an exhibition ahead of the summit.

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, Uttar Pradesh Governor Anandiben Patel and Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath were also present on the occasion.

UP Global Investors Summit 2023 is the flagship investment summit of the Government of Uttar Pradesh. The mega event is aimed to bring together policymakers, industry leaders, academia, think tanks and leaders from across the world to collectively explore business opportunities and forge partnerships.

Investor UP 2.0 is a comprehensive, investor-centric and service-oriented investment ecosystem in Uttar Pradesh that endeavors to deliver relevant, well-defined, standardized services to investors, said an official statement.

PM Narendra Modi will address industrialists from abroad and the country thereafter inaugurating the event.

During the course of the summit, there will be a total of 34 sessions. Of these, 10 sessions will be on the first day, 13 on the second and 11 on the last day. Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and state Industrial Development Minister Nand Gopal Gupta Nandi as well as industrialists Mukesh Ambani, K Chandrasekaran, Kumar Mangalam Birla and Anand Mahindra will address the inaugural session of the summit.

Later, on the opening day, a discussion on ‘UP Designing and Manufacturing in India for the World’ will take place, with Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnav as the chief guest.

On Day 2, a session on ‘UP is Open for Business Providing New Opportunities for MSMEs and Co-operatives’ will be held. Union Home Minister Amit Shah will be the chief guest at the session. Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath will also be present at the session.

One of the sessions lined up on the last day is ‘UP Opportunities in Excise and Sugar Industry’. It will be attended by Union Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal.

There will be a session on E-mobility, and a seminar on Vehicle and Future Mobility in Vashishtha Hall. Union Minister Nitin Gadkari will share his views on the same.

Also, a bankers’ roundtable on UP’s march towards a one trillion dollar economy will also be held. Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will attend the roundtable.

The chief guest at the closing ceremony will be President Dropupadi Murmu.

New Delhi, Feb 10 : India logged 114 new coronavirus infections, while the active cases increased to 1,797, according to the Union Health Ministry data updated on Friday.
The death toll stands at 5,30,750 with two deaths reported by Uttar Pradesh in the last 24 hours, the data updated at 8 am stated.
The Covid case tally was recorded at 4.46 crore (4,46,83,862).The daily positivity was recorded at 0.08 per cent while the weekly positivity was pegged at 0.08 per cent.
The active cases now comprise 0.01 per cent of the total infections, while the national COVID-19 recovery rate has increased to 98.81 per cent, the ministry said.
The number of people who have recuperated from the disease surged to 4,41,51,315, while the case fatality rate was recorded at 1.19 per cent.
According to the ministry’s website, 220.62 crore doses of Covid vaccine have been administered in the country so far under the nationwide vaccination drive.
India’s COVID-19 tally had crossed the 20-lakh mark on August 7, 2020, 30 lakh on August 23, 40 lakh on September 5 and 50 lakh on September 16.
The country crossed the grim milestone of four crore on January 25 last year.

SRIHARIKOTA (AP), Feb 9: ISRO on Friday tasted maiden success in the small satellite launch vehicle segment, with its SSLV D2 rocket injecting three satellites into an intended circular orbit, months after the maiden mission failed to bring in the desired results.
The satellites included ISRO’s earth observation satellite EOS-07.
ISRO’s first mission in 2023 and SSLV’s sequel saw a strange coincidence–it was launched at 9.18 AM, the same time its predecessor lifted off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre here on August 7, 2022 but could not deliver due to orbit anomaly and flight path deviation.
With the earlier SSLV not living up to the expectations, ‘corrective measures’ were put in its successor.
A visibly relieved Chairman of the Indian Space Research Oragnisation (ISRO), S Somanath said SSLV in its second flight put the three satellites in the intended orbit with precision.
“Congratulations to the space community of India…we have a new launch vehicle, the small satellite SSLV. In its second attempt, SSLV D2 has placed the satellites in the intended orbit precisely. Congrats to all three satellite teams,” he said from the Mission Control Centre (MCC) soon after the successful launch that brought all round smiles.
All the problems related to the previous SSLV launch have been identified, corrective action taken and implemented in good time, Somanath added.
Mission Director S Vinod said the ISRO team made a “comeback” is short time soon after the August 7, 2022 failure.
ISRO now has a “new launch vehicle” on offer for the launch vehicle community, he added.
Earlier, the 34-metre tall SSLV soared into majestically into clear skies at 9.18 AM, after a six and a half hour countdown, carrying with it the EOS-07, besides Janus-1 and AzaadiSAT-2 satellites. The rocket placed the satellites into the intended 450-km circular orbit after a 15-odd minute flight.
EOS-07 is a 156.3 kg satellite which has been designed, developed and realised by ISRO. New experiments include mm-Wave Humidity Sounder and Spectrum Monitoring Payload.
Janus-1, a 10.2 kg satellite, built by Antaris, USA is a technology demonstrator, smart satellite mission, ISRO said.
AzaadiSAT-2, weighing about 8.2 kg is a combined effort of about 750 girl students across India guided by Space Kidz India, Chennai. It aims to demonstrate amateur radio communication capabilities, measure radiation, among others, the space agency added.
According to ISRO, SSLV is capable of launching mini, micro or nano satellites in the 10-500 kg segment into the 500 km planar orbit. It caters to the launch of satellites to Low Earth Orbits (LEO) on “launch-on-demand” basis. It provides low-cost access to Space, offers low turn-around time and flexibility in accommodating multiple satellites, and demands minimal launch infrastructure, ISRO added.
It is configured with three solid propulsion stages and a velocity terminal module. (agencies)