The Canadian government announced on April 22nd local time that all flights from India and Pakistan would be banned for 30 days from 23:30 on the same day.
The decision was announced at a joint press conference by the Minister of Health, the Minister of Immigration, the Minister of Transport, the Minister of Public Security and the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs.
On 21 April, the first case of the Variant Coronavirus B1617 found in India was detected in Quebec, Canada. Subsequently, opposition parties, as well as Quebec and Ontario, demanded that the federal government reduce the entry of international flights and tighten immigration controls on Canada’s border with the United States.
Canada’s parliament earlier in the day passed a motion calling on the government to suspend international flights to countries with the worst outbreaks, though the two countries mentioned in the motion are India and Brazil.
In the past two weeks, one in 112 international flights to Canada has been detected to be infected with the new coronavirus, according to Health Canada. Thirty-two of the 112 international flights were from India, 20 from the United States and 10 from France and the United Arab Emirates.
Currently, confirmed cases in Canada are mainly caused by the variant virus B117, which was first found in the UK, and P1, which was first detected in Brazil.