Canada Banning Direct Commercial Flights From India and Pakistan For 30 Days: Starts Tonight

April 22, 2021 ctn_admin

The Canadian government is banning direct commercial flights from both India and Pakistan for 30 days.

Transport Minister Omar Alghabra announced the policy today and said it will take effect tonight (April 22) at 11:30 p.m. Eastern Time.

Passengers who come in via indirect flights will have to undergo testing, said Public Safety Minister Bill Blair.

Health Minister Patty Hajdu said half of the people who are testing positive for COVID-19 after arriving in Canada on an airplane came from India, even though Indian flights accounted for only one-fifth of air traffic. Passengers coming from Pakistan are also testing positive at higher rates than average, she said.

Alghabra said there are no flights coming in from Brazil at the moment but Canada won’t hesitate to ban further commercial flights if the data supports it.

Hajdu said the measures were approved because a “disproportionately high degree of positive travellers” are arriving from those two countries. “It’s a significant volume,” she said.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford and Quebec Premier Francois Legault earlier today asked the Liberal government in Ottawa to “take further measures to limit the spread of the virus.”

Both leaders say they support the current testing and quarantine measures Canada has in place, but that they’re “concerned about the growing number of cases attributed to variants, which arrived in Canada through international travel.”

The CBC reports that Deputy Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Howard Njoo today said officials were reviewing the results of COVID tests at the borders and gathering data from the provinces and territories.

“We are very actively considering all and any additional measures that… will be necessary to protect Canadians,” Public Safety Minister Bill Blair said earlier.

In their letter to Trudeau, Legault and Ford said that “there is an urgent need to address issues with testing and quarantining at the borders, including falsified COVID-19 testing documentation, travellers opting [for] fines over complying [with] quarantine requirements, or travelling via private vehicle/plane to avoid quarantine, among several other areas of concern,” they wrote.

“While it is crucial that the transport of essential goods is not hindered by border measures, it is likewise crucial that all non-essential travel be curtailed. The introduction of stricter measures for travellers crossing at land borders is a significant step to achieve that goal and ensure that collectively we are doing all we can to protect our citizens.”

India has been a particular concern. Some 314,835 new cases of COVID-19 were recorded in the last 24 hours in India.

The Toronto Star says federal Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole also asked the Liberal government to temporarily ban international flights to Canada from countries ravaged by COVID-19 variants, including India and Brazil.

His call comes as more of the so-called India variant, B.1.617, has been detected in both Quebec and British Columbia, the Star said.

“The most important thing is to move quickly and stop flights temporarily from hot-spot countries like India and Brazil where the new variants are out of control and at wide risk of spreading in their population,” O’Toole said.

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