The 158 passengers on a flight between Nice (southern France) and Oslo of the Scandinavian company SAS will have to observe a ten-day quarantine, their plane having landed the very minute Norway switched France to " zone red, ”a Norwegian ministry announced on Saturday.
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According to scores from Oslo Airport and SAS, flight SK4700 landed at midnight sharp. According to the specialist site, FlightRadar24, the SAS Boeing 737 touched down on the Oslo tarmac at midnight one (22:01 GMT), nine minutes ahead of schedule. " The passage in the red zone was from midnight included, so midnight exactly or midnight one, they must make a quarantine ", explained to AFP Elisabeth Johansen, an adviser of the Norwegian ministry of Health. Passengers will be able to quarantine at home and do not have to stay in hotels at the airport, she said.
The authorities took several hours to decide. According to the Norwegian daily Dagbladet, passengers applauded when the pilot told them he had landed at midnight.
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Norway announced Thursday that it was returning France to the " red zone ", as well as Switzerland, Monaco and the Czech Republic. Due to a resurgence of Covid-19, the four countries have again crossed the threshold of 20 new cases per 100,000 inhabitants over the past 14 days, a level that Oslo has set to establish quarantines.
If it remains at low levels, Norway is also facing a rise in cases, with an incidence rate of 7 new cases per 100,000 in the past two weeks, a tripling, according to data from WHO Europe.
