On November 28, the Union Ministry of Health updated the guidelines for air travellers entering into India from at-risk countries. The fresh guidelines, that are in effect from today, mandate post-arrival Covid testing at airports, apart from the pre-departure Covid testing. In doing so, India has joined a group of countries that have placed restrictions or imposed stricter surveillance in some form or the other on the arrival of international travellers. The preventive steps taken by the government are completely justified as the World Health Organisation has termed the situation to be 'perilous and precarious' and maintained that risks arising from the new variant are assessed to be very high. While no deaths have been reported globally on account of the new variant, WHO's Technical Advisory Group on SARS-CoV-2 Virus Evolution (TAG-VE) has confirmed a large number of mutations of the virus — increasing the chances of transmission and rendering existing immunity methods ineffective. Caution may be called the most desirable attribute when it comes to battling an enemy like the SARS-CoV-2 but this caution should not take the form of panic. While it has been established that the Omicron variant will spread faster from one person to another, scientists and researchers are yet to conclude whether or not it will be more virulent. Imposing travel restrictions could be just one of the methods to prevent the Omicron variant outbreak in the country. The government will obviously do well to work on other aspects like ramping up the vaccination drive and ensuring proper implementation of Covid protocols. In fact, the effectiveness of new travel guidelines will also depend upon the stance of other countries in this regard, as many countries across the world have shown comparatively liberal stance on travel restrictions. While India may be keeping a strong vigil on arrivals from at-risk countries, it may miss out on those travellers who come from other countries but have linked travel history with high-risk countries. This is not to discount the moves made by the government, but only to highlight the limitations of the exercise. Furthermore, South Africa, the country that spotted the first case of omicron last week, has raised its apprehension around travel restrictions imposed by several countries like Japan, the UK, Australia, Canada etc. President Cyril Ramaphosa criticised these countries for unfairly punishing South Africa for its early detection of the virus. He termed the travel restrictions as unscientific and ineffective in controlling the virus. This view is resonated by several other countries. The Biden administration, for instance, has ruled out the possibility of travel bans. Fortunately, the omicron variant is known to be successfully detected by RT-PCR tests. The Indian government has mandated RT-PCR tests for arriving air travellers. But the real test in containing the new variants will be in carrying out genome sequencing at a more extensive scale — as it is only through genome sequencing that the variant can be identified. Given that Genome sequencing is a slow process, and the government could send only a limited sample for sequencing, extra emphasis may be given on building the capacity for more sequencing. Also, the best that a country could do under the present circumstances is to intensify its vaccination drive. Though there are no causal links, experts believe that vaccination could control the trajectory of transmissions to at least a certain extent. Countries like the US and the UK are banking on more and more booster shots. Researchers in the UK have found out that over the continuing year, the number of deaths among the unvaccinated population in rich countries is 7-8 times more than those among the vaccinated population. Fortunately, India's vaccination drive has been pretty successful. Perhaps this is the time to build further upon this success, and enjoy the fruits of all the efforts made in this direction to date. Whatever be the strain of the virus, the most elemental precautionary measure will be proper adherence to the Covid protocols. The declining cases over the past several months have pushed people into complacency. It is time that the government and opinion leaders come out and communicate in a manner that will pull people out of the complacent zone before things go wrong. It would be pertinent here though to reiterate that awareness and caution should come in a positive manner, leaving no scope for misinformation and panic. Be prepared, don't panic.