BAKU, Azerbaijan, Mar. 16
By Ilkin Seyfaddini – Trend:
Uzbekistan has decided to suspend transport communication with other countries from 16 March amid the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, Trend reports referring to Uzbek media.
"In order to further prevent the spread of the coronavirus, it was decided to temporarily cancel air and road traffic with other countries," the report said.
After the registration of the first case of infection with coronavirus COVID-19, the country authorities decided to close air and car communication with other countries and put all educational institutions on quarantine, the report said.
Uzbekistan Airways will suspend or limit flights to some cities in Europe, Asia and the Middle East until the end of April.
Uzbekistan Airways also reported that in connection with the decision of the Latvian government, all land and air passenger traffic across the country's border will be banned from March 17.
Uzbekistan has already suspended flights to and from Afghanistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the UK, France, Italy, Spain, China and South Korea over COVID-19.
In addition, the mass events to celebrate Novruz are canceled.
As of March 15, the number of infected citizens in Uzbekistan increased to four persons.
The outbreak of coronavirus in the Chinese city of Wuhan - which is an international transport hub - began at a fish market in late December 2019. The number of people killed by the disease has surpassed 6,513. Over 169,387 people have been confirmed as infected.
Some sources claim the coronavirus outbreak started as early as November 2019.
The World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a pandemic on March 11.
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