Norway is again imposing the coronavirus or COVID-19 quarantine on more travelers from foreign nations, the government mentioned on Wednesday and reiterated its advice that the Norwegians must avoid traveling abroad amid a jump in the number of novel virus cases.
Norway diagnosed 357 people with COVID-19 last week, the highest since April, but still well below the record 1,733 cases found in a single week in late March, data from the Norwegian Institute of Public Health showed.
COVID-19 in Norway
"We're doing this now so that everyone as soon as possible will be able to live their lives as freely as possible," Prime Minister Erna Solberg told a news conference. "All foreign travel is associated with a risk of infection," Solberg said. Norway last week put on hold a plan to further reopen society and urged its citizens to refrain from foreign travel amid the faster spread of the virus.
While not a member of the European Union, Norway belongs to the passport-free Schengen travel zone. It had some of the strictest travel restrictions in Europe in the early phase of the pandemic before gradually lifting them from June.
It will now reimpose 10-day quarantines from Saturday for all travelers from Poland, Malta, Iceland, Cyprus, and the Netherlands, as well as the Faroe Islands and some Danish and Swedish regions. Norway has already reintroduced similar constraints for Spain, France, Switzerland, and several others, and has put on hold a plan to permit leisure travel from some non-European countries, which has been banned since March.
The deadly virus outbreak has created a major stir around the world in recent times infecting more than 20.1 million people globally and claiming the lives of over 741,000 people worldwide in more than 170 nations.
(With agency inputs)
