The measure, not relevant to cargo flights, shall be efficient from 0330 GMT Friday. (Representational)
Ottawa, Canada:
Canada suspended all passenger flights from India and Pakistan on Thursday for 30 days, Transportation Minister Omar Alghabra introduced, citing elevated Covid-19 instances detected in vacationers arriving from these nations.
“Given the upper variety of instances of Covid-19 detected in air passengers arriving in Canada from India and Pakistan… I’m suspending all business and personal passenger flights arriving in Canada from Indian and Pakistan for 30 days,” Alghabra informed a information convention.
The measure will go into impact at 11:30 pm Japanese Time Thursday (0330 GMT Friday).
It is not going to apply to cargo flights, Alghabra mentioned, significantly to make sure the continued cargo of vaccines, private protecting tools and different important items.
India, which is present process an alarming surge being blamed on a “double mutant” variant and super-spreader occasions, reported a single-day excessive of greater than 3,00,000 new instances of Covid-19 on Thursday.
Well being Minister Patty Hajdu mentioned that total only one.8 per cent of vacationers to Canada have examined optimistic for coronavirus.
Whereas India accounts for 20 per cent of latest air journey to Canada, greater than half of all optimistic checks on the border had been from flights arriving from the nation, she mentioned, including that “a equally excessive stage of instances… have additionally been linked to Pakistan.”
Canada in December briefly suspended flights from Britain over issues about outbreaks of a Covid variant.
Earlier on Thursday Parliament voted unanimously to induce the federal government to ban non-essential flights from Covid hotspots the place variants have surged, together with India and Brazil.
Alghabra mentioned there are at the moment no scheduled flights between Canada and Brazil, however added that “we is not going to hesitate to ban journey to different nations if the science bears that out.”
(Aside from the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV employees and is printed from a syndicated feed.)
Discover more from News Journals
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
