April 17, 2021: State Health and Family Welfare Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Saturday said that COVID neutral certificates from other states would not be accepted and all air and train passengers on reaching will have to undergo both Rapid Antigen and RT-PCR tests.

Assam''s current COVID-19 situation is primarly linked to people with travel history, he said.

The minister said that the strain of virus found in the second wave is the UK variant which is very light and spreads very fast.

"Those coming from outside must undergo RT-PCR test on reaching Assam and the results will be available within 24 hours but till then they should stay in isolation", he said. Sarma admitted that the situation has turned "complicated" in the state during the last few days. "As of now we are prepared and the situation is under control". Asked if the spike in COVID-19 cases can be linked to election rallies and campaigns held before the three-phase assembly polls which concluded on April 6, Sarma, also a senior BJP leader said that no connection could be established between the two. "We had conducted a study to find out if COVID cases had increased where there were more election rallies, but this could not established. Out of the 126 assembly constituencies in the state, there are no cases in around 100 of them," he said.

Most of the recent cases are connected with travel history and have been reported from commercial and trading centres like Guwahati, Dibrugarh, Tinsukia, Jorhat, Tezpur and Cachar, he said. "In Assam the current cases are still linked to travel and there is no indigeneous COVID here," he asserted. The stateas reported 2,22,940 positive cases so far with 4,069 active cases and 1,127 deaths reported so far, health department official said.