Dhaka (dpa) – Bangladesh resumed operation of international flights on Tuesday, nearly three months after it suspended them on almost all routes due to the global pandemic of the novel coronavirus, officials said.
A Qatar Airways flight carrying 33 passengers landed at Dhaka's Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport in the morning and its return flight transported 274 passengers to Doha, the chief of the Civil Aviation Authority of Bangladesh, Mafidur Rahman, said.
The airlines carried the passengers only for transiting through Doha, he added.
In-bound passengers must show a health certificate stating that they are negative for Covid-19, the potentially fatal respiratory illness caused by the virus, airport manager Towhidul Ahsan said.
Otherwise, they will face a 14-day institutional quarantine on arrival, he added.
State-run Biman Bangladesh Airlines is scheduled to begin its initial once-a-week Dhaka-London-Dhaka flight on Sunday, the airline's spokesperson Tahera Khandaker said.
The flight frequency will be increased gradually, she added.
Bangladesh suspended connections on all air routes but one in China on March 21 to stem the spread of the novel coronavirus, which killed more than 1,200 people in the South Asian country.
Domestic flight operations were resumed on a limited scale on June 1 after the government relaxed some of the measures taken in March to slow the spread of the virus, which has infected so far a total of 94,481 people.
Bangladesh reported the first cases of the novel coronavirus on March 8.
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