ISLAMABAD – The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has announced that the requirements regarding COVID-19 vaccination and testing proof when traveling to Pakistan have been removed.
According to an official notification issued on Thursday, passengers arriving in Pakistan are no longer required to present a negative PCR report before boarding flights for Pakistan or upon arrival in Pakistan.
Additionally, the mandatory COVID-19 screening of 2% of passengers coming from the UK, Gulf, and other countries has also been removed in a major relief to the passengers who had complained about inordinate delays in this regard.
These changes are effective immediately and will remain in place until further notice, as stated by the notification.
Initially, Pakistan had implemented strict restrictions and requirements to prevent the spread of COVID-19 which had wreaked havoc across the globe. However, these rules were adjusted multiple times depending on the COVID-19 situation, causing significant financial losses to the airline industry.
Countries across the world have largely removed the Covid restrictions and social distancing protocols including China which had imposed one of the most harsh restrictions.
It bears mentioning that last month the head of the UN World Health Organization (WHO) had declared “with great hope” an end to COVID-19 as a public health emergency, stressing that it does not mean the disease is no longer a global threat.
“Last week, COVID-19 claimed a life every three minutes – and that’s just the deaths we know about”, said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General, briefing the media at the agency’s headquarters in Geneva.
According to the World Health Organization’s Coronavirus Dashboard, which has been collecting important data since the beginning of the pandemic, the total number of COVID-19 cases worldwide is now 765,222,932. The number of deaths reported is nearly seven million, specifically 6,921,614.
