{"id":104466,"date":"2020-07-14T14:32:02","date_gmt":"2020-07-14T21:32:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=104466"},"modified":"2020-07-14T14:32:02","modified_gmt":"2020-07-14T21:32:02","slug":"sri-lanka-suspends-international-airports-reopening","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2020\/07\/14\/sri-lanka-suspends-international-airports-reopening\/","title":{"rendered":"Sri Lanka suspends international airport\u2019s reopening"},"content":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Feizal Samath<\/a> Courtesy TTG Asia<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

The reopening of Sri Lanka\u2019s Colombo International Airport has been delayed indefinitely, after repatriation flights were suspended due to a spike in Covid-19 infections last week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This marks the second postponement of the reopening of the country\u2019s main international airport, after authorities announced<\/a> last month that its initial August 1 reopening would be pushed to mid-August to focus on the repatriation of the tens of thousands of Sri Lankans stranded abroad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Reopening of Colombo International Airport runs into second delay, as the country battles Covid-19<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Over 300 Covid-19 cases were detected last Friday at a drug rehabilitation centre in Sri Lanka\u2019s North Central province, prompting authorities to close schools for a week starting Monday (July 13) \u2013 just a week after selected classes were allowed to resume \u2013 while contact tracing is being conducted since some centre officials had gone home and may have infected others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Repatriation flights operated by SriLankan Airlines will be suspended from Tuesday (July 14) as quarantine centres are running out of space after the surge in Covid-19 cases, many of whom are Sri Lankan returnees serving a mandatory 14-day quarantine at government-designated facilities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tourism and aviation minister Prasanna Ranatunga told reporters: We cannot give an exact date for the reopening of the airport. The top priority of the government is to contain the spread of Covid-19 and to repatriate Sri Lankans still stranded in various parts of the world.\u201d The repatriation process will resume once the spike in new clusters is controlled, he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The government has said that the airport, closed to commercial traffic, will reopen only after all or most of the Sri Lankans stranded abroad have been brought back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To date, nearly 15,000 stranded Lankans from 65 counties have returned, out of 50,000 citizens awaiting flights home, according to government figures. Sri Lanka has reported 2,617 Covid-19 cases as of July 13, with 1,981 recoveries and 11 deaths.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Feizal Samath Courtesy TTG Asia The reopening of Sri Lanka\u2019s Colombo International Airport has been delayed indefinitely, after repatriation flights were suspended due to a spike in Covid-19 infections last week. This marks the second postponement of the reopening of the country\u2019s main international airport, after authorities announced last month that its initial August 1 reopening would […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-104466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104466"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104466\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}