By Yosef Abdullah

Okaz/ Saudi Arabia

JEDDAH — The Ministry of Health has stressed the importance for persons planning to travel outside the Kingdom to enquire about the countries they wish to head to.

In this regard, the Assistant Undersecretary of the Ministry of Health for Preventive Health and Consultant in Contagious Diseases Dr. Abdullah Asiri has stressed the importance of enquiring about the countries they are traveling to so as to know the measures these countries are taking to counter the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

Through his Twitter account, Asiri said: “When international travel is opened, completing the vaccination doses is very important, but it does not mean that all the countries will exempt vaccinated persons from being quarantined on arrival in those countries.”

He added: “Enquiring before travel is very important so that one does not waste the first week in quarantine.”

It is noteworthy that the General Authority of Civil Aviation (GACA) has issued directives to all airline companies operating in the Kingdom to urgently speed up linking the data for passengers’ flights with passenger’s health condition on the “Tawakkalna” app.

It also directed the airlines to restrict the issuance of boarding passes only to passengers whose health condition on the app is mentioned as “immunized” or “affliction with COVID-19 not proven”.

GACA stressed to airline companies to grant passengers the facility to cancel their bookings, via SMS text messages, in the event, that their health condition is different from “immunized” and “affliction with COVID-19 not proven”.

Hence, to board planes, passengers must have the “Tawakkalna” app on their mobile phones and they can only travel if their Tawakkalna app shows they have been “immunized” and are “coronavirus-free”.