Africa-Press – Mozambique. The Spanish government on Thursday carried out a repatriation flight from Maputo to Madrid with 150 passengers of 15 nationalities who were stranded in Mozambique due to border closures, the Spanish embassy said.
The plane left at 4.30 p.m. local time (2.30 p.m. in Lisbon) with Spaniards, Mozambicans and people of other nationalities living in the country, as well as passengers from the European Union, whose flights had been cancelled, the Spanish embassy in Mozambique said in a statement sent to the media.
Read: Mozambique: Spanish repatriation flight includes 15 Portuguese
The flight, carried out under the European Civil Protection Mechanism, arrived in Maputo on Wednesday evening with a delegation from the Mozambican Parliament (AR), which was stuck in Madrid after its connections to Maputo were cancelled.
The delegation from the Mozambican parliament was in Spain to attend the General Assembly of the International Parliamentary Union when their return flights were cancelled, the embassy said in the statement.
In an attempt to contain the spread of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus, several countries, including Portugal, have closed borders to foreigners or suspended and restricted international travel, particularly to southern Africa, including Mozambique.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Tuesday that travel bans will not prevent the international spread of the Omicron variant and place a heavy burden on lives and livelihoods, and could adversely impact global efforts to fight the pandemic.
Mozambique has a total of 1,941 deaths and 151,594 cases of Covid-19, 98% of whom have recovered from the disease and seven hospitalised.
Covid-19 has caused at least 5,223,072 deaths worldwide, among more than 262.93 million infections by the new coronavirus recorded since the start of the pandemic, according to the most recent balance sheet from Agence France-Presse.
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