(Image source from: financialexpress.com)

United States is the worst hit country with the impacts of Covid-19, reporting over 1 million confirmed cases and over 60,000 deaths already.

Amidst the rising crisis in the United States, many Americans who pleaded to be airlifted from India are now stepping back from their decision and asking to stay back in India. They believe that the best decision now is to “ride it out” instead of returning to US at the moment.

Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Ian Brownlee reported that majority of the Americans who had registered for the repatriation from India are not responding to the offer of seats on the planes that have been arranged by the departments to get them back home.

Brownlee further said that just two weeks back they had a list of the registered Americans who wanted to return to India and they were pretty sure that once the arrangements were made, they would be willing to come back as soon as possible.

Things have now come down to a situation where the authorities are making multiple calls to ask people for the seats that they registered for. To that, they are getting the reply that they would just ride it out.

4000 Americans have been rescued and brought back to the country last week while 6000 more Americans have been waiting to be airlifted.

India has already cancelled air flights as well as railway operation since March 25 to further combat the spread of the novel coronavirus.

Brownlee has also spoken about the massive logistic surrounding the efforts to bring back the Americans stranded in Delhi and Mumbai.

By Somapika Dutta