Greece bans Qatar flights after passengers test positive for COVID-19

LONDON – Greece suspended on Tuesday flights to and from Qatar until June 15 after authorities announced that 12 out of 91 passengers onboard a Qatar Airways flight to Athens had tested positive for coronavirus.

Nine of the infected passengers are Pakistani nationals, coming from the city of Gujrat, who have a Greek residence permit, two are Greek nationals coming from Australia and one person is a Japanese national and member of a Greek-Japanese family, the General Secretariat for Civil Protection said in a press release.

The civil protection ministry responded by suspending air links to and from the Arab state until 15 June. All 91 travellers on the flight were immediately placed in quarantine. 

“We knew there would be such cases. We’ve seen what can happen this summer,” Prof Nikolaos Sipsas, an expert in infectious diseases,told ANT1 TV, adding that the incident highlighted the degree to which opening up to tourism was a calculated risk. 

The infected passengers will remain isolated in a government-designated hotel for two weeks.

Those who tested negative will have to stay for seven days as they are considered close high and low risk contacts. They will be tested again after a week. 

Greece is expected to ease rules once it opens international routes from July 1 as random screening for the virus will apply to all arriving passengers unless public health considerations dictate stricter testing.

Passengers flying in from airports deemed by the EU’s aviation safety agency (EASA) to be in areas with high risk of transmission of COVID-19 will be required to stay overnight in a designated hotel for testing.

But the Qatar Airways flight has exposed the danger that Greece will be facing during its peak tourist season, which may trigger a second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in the Mediterranean country.