Saudi Arabia moved Monday to halt all international flights and travel within the face of a new strain of COVID-19 reported within the U.K. that experts say is spreading faster than earlier mutations.
The Times of India reported that a notice from the country’s General Authority of Civil Aviation issued a discovery indicating that the ban would be in place for one week, with the potential of being extended another seven days if deemed mandatory to stop a new surge of cases.
Officials are “suspending all international flights for travelers (except in exceptional cases) temporarily for one week, which will be extended for another week. International flights at present in the territory of the Kingdom are allowed to depart,” read the notification obtained by the Times.
The nation’s decision comes as roughly a dozen countries banned flights from the U.K. in response to warnings from Prime Minister Boris Johnson {that a} new, faster-spreading strain of the coronavirus is active in southern England. Johnson moved over the weekend to shut shops and different businesses as well as implement tougher restrictions on public gatherings, decisions he stated were not easy to make in the days ahead of Christmas.
Simply over 361,000 cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed inside Saudi Arabia, and the nation has so far appeared to avoid the second wave of infections the likes of which it experienced earlier this yr. Regardless of this, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website urges people to avoid all journeys to the country due to a supposedly “very high” level of the coronavirus in Saudi Arabia.
