The United Arab Emirates recently announced a travel ban on all its citizens who are not vaccinated and received the Booster shot amid the rising cases of COVID-19 pandemic fuelled by the Omicron variant in the country. The National Emergency Crisis and Disaster Management Authority (NCEMA) stated that only the citizens who have received both doses of vaccination along with the booster shot would be allowed to travel by air, the booster shot is compulsory for the vaccinated citizens as per the country’s protocol. The air travel ban will commence on the 10th of January, 2022 and would go on until the Government announced its upliftment.
However, the country will allow the citizens who are medically exempt from receiving the vaccination on humanitarian grounds, but only that case being the exception. The ban has been announced due to the rising threat of the COVID-19 pandemic which is already causing a great crisis in Europe and the United States. According to the Ministry of Health and Prevention, the UAE on Saturday reported 2,556 fresh COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours adding to its total number of cases which is now 264,493. Seeing the worsening situations, it was high time for UAE to take strict actions concerning its air travel.
