UAE-based airline Emirates says that it will temporarily suspend all flights to and from South Africa.<\/p>\n
The airline said in a statement on Thursday (14 January), that the suspension will run from Saturday (16 January) to 28 January 2021 due to operational reasons.<\/p>\n
It did not provide further details on these operational reasons and the suspension.<\/p>\n
The last flights to the three South African gateways will be on 15 January\u00a0per the schedule below:<\/p>\n
“Customers holding tickets with final destinations in South Africa from 16 January to 28 January\u00a0will not be accepted for travel at their point of origin.<\/p>\n
“Emirates regrets any inconvenience caused. Affected customers should contact their travel agent or Emirates contact centre for rebooking options,” it said.<\/p>\n
A number of countries have announced travel bans to and from South Africa, citing fears of the new Covid-19 variant discovered in the country.<\/p>\n
A variant of the SARS-COV-2 Virus (Covid-19) \u2013 currently termed the \u2018501.V2 Variant\u2019 \u2013\u00a0 was\u00a0 identified by genomics scientists in South Africa and formally announced by government in late December.<\/p>\n
Health minister Dr Zweli Mkhize said a genomics team, led by the Kwazulu-Natal Research Innovation and Sequencing Platform, or KRISP, has sequenced hundreds of samples from across the country since the beginning of the pandemic in March.<\/p>\n
They noticed that a particular variant has increasingly dominated the findings of the samples collected in the past two months.<\/p>\n
In a national address on Monday evening (11 January), president Cyril Ramaphosa confirmed that South Africa’s second coronavirus wave was being driven by this new variant.<\/p>\n
However, he said that early scientifc evidence showed that while the variant is more virulent, it is not more dangerous than the initial strain.<\/p>\n