Dhaka : Bangladesh has announced its plans to ban all international and domestic flights for a week starting from Wednesday, to counter a spike in new coronavirus cases.
Civil Aviation Authority of Bangladesh (CAAB) in a statement said that All international passenger flights to and from Bangladesh will remain suspended from April 14 to 20, as quoted by dpa news agency
More than 500 flights will be cancelled because of the ban, said the CAAB's Air Vice Marshal M Mafidur Rahman.
Bangladeshi airports have now been operating an average of 70 to 75 flights per day, he added.
Though all domestic passenger flights and chartered helicopter flights are going to be suspended, some exceptions may be made for medical evacuations, humanitarian relief and cargo flights, the aviation authority reported.
The Bangladeshi government has enforced a nine-day nationwide shutdown until Tuesday, to be followed by yet another seven-day lockdown from Wednesday, amid surge in Covid-19 cases since March.
The authorities have also imposed a ban on air passengers from Europe and 12 other countries on April 3.
The Passenger flight operations on domestic routes were suspended on April 5.
Bangladesh, which reported its first cases of the novel coronavirus last March, reported its highest single-day increase in infections on April 9, with 7,462 cases. Till date, the country has reported some 684,756 cases and 9,739 deaths.