Morocco suspends flights to/from UK and Netherlands due to increase in COVID-19 cases – MercoPress

Morocco suspends flights to/from the UK and the Netherlands due to an increase in COVID-19 cases

The Moroccan government banned flights to and from the United Kingdom from Thursday due to fears of a rising number of coronavirus infections.

The Moroccan National Office of the airport clarified that the procedure will remain in effect until further notice.

The travel ban could affect families in England and Wales who plan to travel to a popular tourist site during the mid-term holidays, which start next week.

Following the announcement, easyJet has canceled departing flights from the UK to Morocco until November 30, and is now negotiating with the Moroccan authorities to implement repatriation flights for British nationals stranded there.

The Moroccan decision comes at a time when British officials are recording more than 40,000 new cases of Covid-19 daily, and the country has recorded the largest number of coronavirus deaths in a single day since March. In the past two weeks, the UK has reported more COVID-19 cases than France, Germany, Italy and Spain combined, in what appears to be a ‘winter crisis’.

Morocco applied the same procedure to flights to and from the Netherlands. The current advice from the Dutch Foreign Ministry for people trapped in Morocco reportedly is to find “alternatives to travel through other countries close to the Netherlands”.

Dutch airline Transavia alone flew 3,500 people to the country last week. A Transavia spokesperson said: “We are studying whether we can obtain permission to fly longer to transport passengers stranded in Morocco.”

The Dutch Foreign Ministry also made it clear that it was not yet clear when the measure would be lifted.