Saudi Arabia suspends flights in the Basque Country due to virus variant Coronavirus pandemic News

Flights from Ethiopia and Vietnam were also banned without the permission of the authorities.

Saudi Arabia has said it is suspending flights to the United Arab Emirates (BAC), Ethiopia and Vietnam to protect against a variant of coronavirus.

The move, announced on Saturday, allowed citizens who were fully integrated after the ban on foreign travel lasted more than a year to travel abroad.

Flights to all three countries will be suspended from 11pm on Sunday, the state news agency SPA said, according to an Interior Ministry official. Saudi citizens and residents returning from these countries will be required to be quarantined for 14 days, he added.

Citizens would be prohibited from “traveling directly or indirectly, without prior … permission from the authorities.”

The decision was made “because the coronavirus pandemic is constantly erupting and a new mutated strain of the virus has spread,” he added, without explicitly mentioning the increasingly emerging Delta variant worldwide.

It was first detected in India and is now in at least 85 countries. Delta is the most contagious variant of coronavirus still identified.

The Basque Country – a well-known recreational destination for many Saudi Arabs, especially Dubai – announced last week that it had registered cases of the Delta variant and had suspended flights to and from India.

Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, places heavy restrictions on the annual Hajj pilgrimage. It has officially registered more than 490,000 coronavirus cases, including nearly 7,850 deaths.