COVID-19: UAE bars citizens from travelling to 14 countries including Pakistan

ABUD DHABI – The UAE government on Friday prohibited its citizens from travelling to 14 countries, including Pakistan, India and Bangladesh in order to control the spread of COVID-19.

The Gulf country has already banned flights from Pakistan despite country’s decline positivity rate as compare to neighbouring India.

The UAE’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation (MoFAIC) and the National Emergency Crisis and Disasters Management Authority (NCEMA) in a joint statement said that nationals are prohibited from travelling to India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Namibia, Zambia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, Sierra Leone, Liberia, South Africa, and Nigeria.

“Exempt from the decision are the UAE diplomatic missions in the aforementioned countries; emergency treatment cases; official delegations and previously authorised business and technical delegates,” WAM quoted the official statement as saying.

“In a joint statement marking the commencement of the peak travel season which coincides with the exceptional circumstances the world is going through currently due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the MoFAIC and NCEMA underlined the need for the UAE citizens to comply with all precautionary measures in general, particularly the COVID-19 countermeasures, and all other preventative protocols in place in their countries of destination,” it said.

Pakistan reported 1,277 new cases of the novel covid-19 in the last 24 hours, marking the second day in a row with 1,000 or more daily new cases and the third day in a row with a positivity rate of over 2%.

COVID-19 claimed the lives of 24 individuals over the course of 24 hours, according to statistics from the National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC), with the majority of fatalities recorded from Sindh (14), Punjab (6), and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) (4).

During this time, Pakistan conducted 46,941 COVID-19 tests, with 1,277 people testing positive for the virus. As a result, the coronavirus positivity ratio is 2.72 percent.

The number of ongoing cases in the nation has risen to 31,910, while overall recoveries have increased to 905,430.

Since the pandemic broke out in the nation last year, a total of 959,685 cases have been identified in the country.