New Delhi: Earlier this week, the Indian Bureau of Immigration announced the suspension of visas of nationals from China, South Korea, Italy, Iran, and Japan — countries with the highest number of coronavirus cases. But there are no travel restrictions for a whole set of other countries, some of whom have hundreds of confirmed cases of the lethal virus.
Germany and France, for example, have had 545 and 423 confirmed cases respectively, but no restrictions have been imposed on travel to and from them. The two European countries account for 2.7 lakh and 2.6 lakh tourists to India respectively, according to 2018 data from the Union Ministry of Tourism.
Other countries like Spain, the USA, Switzerland and the UK also seem to be on the cusp of a coronavirus epidemic, but India did not make it mandatory to screen travellers from these countries at the port of entry until Friday, when all passengers began to be screened.
ThePrint has reviewed country-wise data for the number of confirmed coronavirus cases and the annual inflow of tourists from each of them in 2018.
For the purpose of this article, the coronavirus cases data used is accurate up to 4 pm Indian Standard Time on 6 March 2020.
The Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare did not reply to ThePrint’s email and text messages asking for comment. This report will be updated when it responds.
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Over 100 confirmed coronavirus cases
Apart from Germany and France, the four countries mentioned above all have 100 confirmed cases of coronavirus — Spain, the US, Switzerland and the UK.
Spain has 282 confirmed cases, and sent 84,356 tourists to India in 2018.
The US has 233 coronavirus cases, and accounted for the second highest number of foreign tourists to India in 2018 — 14.5 lakh.
Switzerland has 119 confirmed cases and accounted for 49,322 tourists to India, while the United Kingdom has 116 cases and makes up the third largest source of foreign tourists in India — 10.2 lakh.
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Under 100 cases
Countries with under 100 confirmed cases of coronavirus also account for thousands of tourists to India every year, according to the 2018 data.
Sweden and Norway have 94 and 91 confirmed cases, and sent 46,743 and 22,631 tourists to India in 2018 respectively. The Netherlands has 82 cases and accounted for 81,615 annual tourists to India.
Australia has 60 confirmed cases and sent 3.4 lakh tourists to India in 2018.
50 cases and below
South-East Asian countries Malaysia and Thailand have 50 and 48 coronavirus cases respectively and accounted for 3.1 lakh and 1.6 lakh tourists, while the corresponding numbers for Taiwan are 44 and 49,457.
It must be noted that the Indian government has mandated that passengers arriving from South-east Asian countries need to undergo screening at the port of entry.
Other countries with confirmed cases between 40 and 50 include Belgium, Canada and Austria. From these three countries, 44,086, 3.5 lakh, and 33,200 tourists visited India in 2018.
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(This report has been updated to reflect that mandatory screening of passengers at Indian airports began Friday.)