VANDE Bharat Mission being resumed

WITH  rapid recoveries of COVID-19 patients and recovery rate of coronavirus patients improving to 64.54 percent in past 24 hours due to various measures taken by the Union Ministry for Health & Family Welfare, India has announced Phase Five of the Vande Bharat Mission from the first of August to help repatriate stranded People of Indian Origin from overseas. A total of 792 flights including  692 international flights and 100 domestic flights have been scheduled under this phase to repatriate Indians from 23 countries. These include GCC countries, US, Canada, UK, Germany, France, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Thailand, China, Israel, and Kyrgyzstan. Briefing media, External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Anurag Srivastava said, these flights would cater to 21 different airports in India and repatriate a total of one lakh thirty thousand Indians stranded abroad. As many as 54180 passengers have been brought to the country’s financial capital Mumbai as of now from different countries as part of the Centre’s ‘Vande Bharat Mission’. The Maharashtra Chief Minister’s Office (CMO) has said in a statement that that in addition to this, 18 more flights are expected to land in Mumbai today. Immigrants have been brought back from many countries including the United Kingdom, Singapore, Philippines, USA, Bangladesh and Malaysia. Under the Vande Bharat program, 395 flights have brought 54180 passengers to Mumbai. According to Maharashtra Government data, of the total number of passengers, 18587 are from Maharashtra and 18192 hail from Mumbai while as many as 17401 belongs to other states. In view of the Covid-19 outbreak, passengers from Mumbai were admitted to institutional quarantine facilities set up in different hotels by the state government. While others were sent to their respective districts for getting quarantined.