56 Air India Staff Died Due to COVID-19, Says Government

By Shakir Husain NEW DELHI, July 22 (Bernama) -- Air India, which is operating flights to repatriate Indians stranded abroad due to the coronavirus pandemic, has lost 56 employees to the virus. "A total of 3,523 employees of Air India Limited have been affected by COVID-19. Out of this, 56 employees succumbed to this pandemic till July 14, 2021," the country's junior civil aviation minister V.K. Singh told parliament on Thursday. India's national carrier began a huge repatriation operation, called "Vande Bharat", in May last year to bring home Indian citizens stranded overseas. A large number of them lived in the Gulf Arab region, Southeast Asia and North America. More than 2.2 million stranded Indians have been repatriated on 14,554 flights till July 20, the Ministry of Civil Aviation said in a tweet on Wednesday. -- BERNAMA