Canada’s top public health doctor says the federal government is looking into flights arriving from India amid reports that a massive surge of coronavirus cases is ravaging that country with nearly 300,000 new cases of COVID-19 recorded there on Wednesday alone, with 2,000 more deaths linked to the virus.

Chief public health officer Dr. Theresa Tam says Ottawa has generally opted for measures that are not country-specific, such as a pre-boarding test for COVID-19, tests on arrival, and government-mandated quarantine, but she adds that says India could be a special case due to a “variant of interest” there that may be fuelling a massive outbreak of COVID-19.

“We will be doing further analysis because it’s an emerging situation, not just because of the variant of interest at this point but because they have unfortunately a very massive resurgence in that country,” she said. “We will be doing that risk assessment again and using the data that we have now collected at the border to inform our next steps.”

According to the federal government, there have been 35 flights from India with at least one case of COVID-19 that have arrived in Canada in the last two weeks.

Ontario’s government, for one, is “pleading” with Ottawa to ban travel from India and other hot-spot countries. The provincial government says cases of COVID-19 are pouring in through international borders and House leader Paul Calandra told question period that it’s critical that the federal Liberals act now to prevent more variants from infiltrating Canada.

Canada has limited travel from some countries over the course of the pandemic.

In late December, the government barred flights arriving from the UK in a bid to prevent a contagious variant of COVID-19 that first emerged there from entering this country.

The ban lasted until early January, and ultimately, the B.1.1.7 variant took hold in Canada.