On late Saturday (July 25), the Ministry of Health in Cambodia has made an announcement on suspension of passenger flight operations from Malaysia and Indonesia, in a bid to limit the importation and spread of COVID-19 pandemic in the country.

The ministry said that it will temporarily ban the arrival of all passenger flights from these two countries effective from August 1, till further notice. The decision is made because the ministry had noted that the new numbers of imported COVID-19 cases in the past few weeks were especially from these two countries.

Ms. Or Vandine, the Health Ministry’s secretary of state and spokeswoman, has informed that the 8 new positive cases were found on July 23, included 4 Cambodia nationals and 4 Indonesia nationals who arrived in the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh via two different flights from Indonesia. Moreover, the remaining 199 passengers on the two flights underwent a 14-day compulsory quarantine at various quarantine centers in the capital.

Another 15 new cases were found on Cambodian men. They returned to Cambodia from Egypt and Russia on July 19, with a connecting flight in Malaysia. Their first two tests were negative for the virus.

“The samples of the 15 Cambodian men were tested for the third time by the Pasteur Institute of Cambodia and the result released on Friday showed that they were positive for COVID-19,” said Ms. Vandine.

However, Cambodia has suspended flight only from Malaysia and Indonesia among its neighboring countries. Cambodia had restricted to receive foreigners for nearly two months till mid of May. Later, the country has resumed operations of international passenger flight on May 20, to follow travel bubble schemes with neighboring countries.

In regard to total COVID-19 cases in Cambodia, the country has reported a total number of 225 confirmed cases and no death caused by virus, till the date. However, 143 patients tested positive to COVID-19 have completely recovered, as of Monday (July 27).