With one minute or so, their stay took a completely different direction. The 158 passengers on a flight between Nice and Oslo of the Scandinavian company SAS, who saw their plane land the very minute Norway switched France to the "red zone" for the Covid-19 risk this Saturday, will have to observe a ten-day quarantine.
According to scores from Oslo Airport and SAS, flight SK4700 landed at midnight sharp. But according to the specialist site FlightRadar24, the Boeing 737 landed on the Oslo tarmac at midnight one (the same time in Paris), that is, 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 Elisabeth Johansen, an adviser of the Norwegian ministry of Health. Passengers will be able to quarantine at home and should not stay in hotels at the airport, she said.
Change to red after an increase in cases
The authorities took several hours to decide on the fate of these travelers. According to the Norwegian daily Dagbladet, they even applauded when the pilot told them that he had landed at midnight.
Norway had announced Thursday that it was returning to the "red zone" France, 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 last 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.
