COVID-19: Over 11,900, mainly Indians, Egyptians, leave Kuwait in 2 days

Cairo: Air travel from Kuwait aboard emergency flights has recently picked momentum, with 11,921 passengers leaving aboard a total of 70 flights over the past two days, aviation officials were quoted as saying Sunday.

They were 36 and 34 emergency flights respectively on Friday and Saturday despite the suspension of international flights to and from Kuwait since March as a precaution against the spread of the new coronavirus, sources at the General Directorate of Civil Aviation (GDCA) told Kuwaiti newspaper Al Rai. The bulk of those flights headed to Egypt and India whose nationals are among the largest expatriate communities in Kuwait.

Out of the 36 flights that left the Kuwait International Airport on Friday, 16 took off to Egypt and 15 to India. On Saturday, 20 others flew to Egypt and eight to India, according to the sources.

The rest of the flights on those two days left for other destinations, including Qatar, Iran, Ethiopia, Bangladesh and Turkey.

The Indian community in Kuwait are estimated at nearly 1 million, while there are about 600,000 Egyptians in the Gulf country.

The flights from Kuwait were operated amid stringent precautions against COVID-19, including the mandatory wearing of protective face masks and observing social distancing, the sources said.

"According to instructions from airlines, all passengers have to show up four hours before their respective flights in order to finalise travel procedures easily and comfortably," Hassan Al Humr, a GDCA at the airport said. "Despite the travellers' denisty that reached 11,921 in two days, we have followed a system to allow them into the airport based on the entry of each 10 passengers in one time, thus ensuring social distancing," he added.