The Trudeau Liberals are considering a move to ban flights from India due to a massive surge of COVID-19 cases ravaging that country.

Public Safety Minister Bill Blair says he hopes to make an announcement as early as Thursday on additional measures to protect Canadians.

“We have previously banned flights from areas where there was a high incidence of infection, and particularly with the new variants, and we are actively considering similar tools again. We’ve demonstrated our ability to use those tools to protect Canadians and we’re still quite prepared to do that,” Blair explained on Wednesday.

India recorded nearly 300.000 new cases of COVID-19 on Wednesday alone with 2000 more related deaths.

A case involving a variant of interest that originated in India, known as the B. 1.617 variant, was detected in Quebec, west of Quebec City, on Wednesday.

The same variant has also surfaced in British Columbia.

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