United Arab Emirates
Travel ban: Emirates prohibit unvaccinated citizens from all travel abroad
Locals in front of the Dubai skyline with the Burj Khalifa
© Guiseppe Cacace
The incidences are also rising rapidly in Dubai: celebrities have to extend their quarantine vacations due to Covid-19 infections and football professionals have to cancel their training camps. For locals, the government is drastically tightening the exit conditions – even for people who have been vaccinated twice.
After Israel, the United Arab Emirates are the country with the second fastest and most efficient vaccination campaign. Not only did they offer their residents a vaccination offer, but at the beginning of December 2021, more than 90 percent of the population had been vaccinated twice. A third of the population has now also received a booster vaccination.
Just a few weeks ago everything was fine. Authorities reported a seven-day incidence of less than 10 per 100,000 residents between mid-October and mid-November. But the number of infections has increased by 20 percent every day since Christmas. How much the situation is worsening is shown by the announcement by the National Emergency Crisis and Disaster Management Authority (NCEMA) from the capital Abu Dhabi.
The message on Twitter is a bang: “The travel ban for citizens of the UAE who are not vaccinated with a Covid-19 vaccine begins on January 10, 2022, combined with the request to receive the booster dose for those who are fully vaccinated.” However, exceptional medical cases are taken into account and are expressly excluded from the stricter provisions if, for example, people have to fly abroad for medical treatment.
Restrictions in high season
Defacto, the measure means a travel ban for unvaccinated people and also for those who have been vaccinated twice. The last group of people must be boosted – there is no exit without proof. The radical change should not only be seen against the background of protecting one’s own population on trips abroad and on their return, and of slowing down the spread of the omicron variant, but the Emirates should remain attractive as a travel destination with the tourist magnet Dubai.
Because in the winter months there is high season in Dubai with mild temperatures. For many sun seekers, the Emirates are an alternative to a vacation trip to the Canary Islands on a flight that is only a little longer. Above all for influencers and football players. But the reports that footballers like Kevin Mbabu from VfL Wolfsburg or Dan-Axel Zagadou from BVB have to go into isolation at their holiday destination in Dubai because of a corona infection are increasing.
In addition, there are almost daily messages from shipping companies that have to end, interrupt or cancel their cruises to destinations in the Persian Gulf prematurely in Dubai due to Covid-19 infections on board.
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Dubai is particularly attractive for visitors this winter thanks to the Expo Dubai 2020. Because of Corona, the six-month world exhibition was only opened a year later in October 2021. But it is already becoming apparent that the goal of 25 million visitors cannot be achieved. Half of this is to be expected, and the proportion of visitors from abroad is likely to decrease even more due to the current Corona development.
The expo is an important milestone that should draw the world’s attention to the emirate and stimulate tourism again. In the first Corona year, the number of international visitors fell from 16.7 (2019) to 5.51 million.
The FC Basel team pulled the ripcord on Monday: The football players, including the 60-strong delegation, were already at Zurich Airport to check-in for their flight to the training camp in Dubai when the club management canceled their trip at the last minute.
“The general development of the pandemic in the past few days – and also a recent very sharp increase in cases in the United Arab Emirates – represent too great an uncertainty in relation to a good and orderly training camp for the moment from the perspective of FCB,” it said to justify the short-term decision.
Sources: www.ncema.gov.ae, www.mofaic.gov.ae, www.uae-embassy.de, www.emirates.com/de, https://english.alarabiya.net
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