As Kuwait reopens its airport after months of lockdown, it announced that it will be banning flights to dozens of high-risk destinations due to the global pandemic.
Kuwait is in the process of easing lockdown measures and reopening parts of the country, including the airport.
To contain the spread of any potential infections, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation announced Saturday that Kuwait will indefinitely ban flights to and from 31 countries they deemed as “high-risk”.
Even travelers who visited any of these 31 “high-risk” countries within 14 days before traveling to Kuwait are banned from entering until further notice.
Their ban includes Lebanon, which just entered into the second wave of the coronavirus outbreak.
Other banned countries are:
- India
- Iran
- China
- Brazil
- Colombia
- Armenia
- Bangladesh
- Philippines
- Syria
- Spain
- Singapore
- Bosnia and Herzegovina
- Sri Lanka
- Nepal
- Iraq
- Mexico
- Indonesia
- Chile
- Pakistan
- Egypt
- Hong Kong
- Italy
- Northern Macedonia
- Moldova
- Panama
- Peru
- Serbia
- Montenegro
- Dominican Republic
- Kosovo
Kuwait International Airport partially reopened for commercial flights on August 1st, after locking down back in mid-March.
The airport is resuming operations in three stages, allowing 30% capacity of flights to start with.
All arriving passengers must have negative PCR tests before traveling and should also self-isolate for 14 days.
Last month, Cyprus banned travel to and from Lebanon as well. It initially put Lebanon on its safe list. However, after reopening the country, Lebanon saw a rapid resurgence of infections and is now under another lockdown.
Lebanese in Kuwait
There is a large population of Lebanese living in Kuwait, or who do business between Lebanon and the Arab Gulf country.
Recently, two Lebanese doctors passed away in Kuwait after contracting the coronavirus. One of them was just honored by a Kuwait hospital that named a building after him.
This is a great portrayal of the service and contributions made by the Lebanese community in Kuwait.
Now, Lebanese (as well as Kuwaiti citizens who often visit Lebanon) will have to wait a bit longer to travel to or from Kuwait.
