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Saturday 23 Nov 2024
LOCAL EDITION
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LOCAL EDITION
Passengers disembark from a Qatar Airways flight on July 15, 2020: The country welcomed its first tourists in more than three months on July 15. A Qatar Airways flight landed at the Velana International Airport in the morning. The Maldives closed its borders on March 27, due to the situation with COVID-19. (Sun Photo/Fayaz Moosa)
Acting Tourism Minister Fayyaz Ismail has said that it was unlikely that the borders of the country would close again and that the option was to try and minimize the spread of COVID-19 in the Maldives as much as possible.
The Maldives reopened its borders today after nearly three months.
In a press conference at Velana International Airport (VIA), Minister Fayyaz said that it was unlikely that the borders would close again, and that the government’s mindset was now very much different from the time when COVID-19 first began to spread.
“Every country was trying to prevent the arrival of the virus. Strict measures were undertaken. However, now it is present all over the world. Now we can only contain and manage. I don’t think that the borders will be closed again.” Said Minister Fayyaz.
However, if requested to do so by health authorities, the government would not hesitate to do so, said the Minister. The Minister said that the implementation of stringent safety measures made the Maldives more appealing to other countries as a safe travel destination.
MMPRC chief Thayyib Mohamed also announced that from today onward, the tagline of the Maldivian tourism will be “Rediscover the Maldives – The Sunny Side of Life”.
Apart from the Qatar Airways flight that landed in the morning, one more flight is scheduled to arrive in today. The flight is a Sri Lankan Airlines flight.
