Canada has suspended direct flights from India and Pakistan for 30 days to better monitor the proliferation of new Covid-19 varieties.
The decision was taken at a simulated news conference with five cabinet ministers. It came after India saw the world’s largest single-day increase in coronavirus cases, with 314,835 new infections.
Public health officials are concerned that a more virulent strain of the virus is spreading through the 1.3 billion-strong population. Due to the deteriorating situation, countries ranging from Singapore to the United Kingdom have banned flights from India.
A few cases of the Indian variant have already been recorded in some Canadian provinces. India accounts for 20% of recent air traffic volumes to Canada, according to Health Minister Patty Hajdu, but more than half of all positive border checks.
“Due to the increased number of Covid-19 cases found in air passengers arriving in Canada from India and Pakistan, Transport Canada has issued a notice to airmen, or NOTAM, to suspend direct passenger air traffic from those countries,” said Transport Minister Omar Alghabra.
With the third wave of cases threatening to flood hospitals in major Canadian cities, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been under the pressure to respond. The leaders of Ontario and Quebec, the country’s two most populous provinces, asked Trudeau on Thursday to tighten travel laws at air and land boundaries even further. International flights from coronavirus hot spots have also been halted, according to opposition lawmakers.
“There are currently no flights from Brazil, but if science supports our position, we would not hesitate to prohibit travel from other countries,” Alghabra said. “This is neither a Chinese nor an Indian virus. It has an effect on all of us.”
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