Cyprus Mail 17 March 2020 - article by George Psyllides
There was fresh tension at Larnaca airport on Tuesday after the authorities had initially refused entry to six students from the Netherlands who did not have a medical certificate.
Relatives of the six students who arrived in the morning with five other passengers on a flight from the Netherlands, reacted after they were told they would not be allowed entry into the country without the paper.
The six had doctors’ notes certifying they did not have any symptoms of the coronavirus but no certificate saying they were negative. The students were allowed off the plane and into Larnaca airport’s medical centre for tests. After the tests, the students will be taken to a quarantine in Platres. The five other passengers will return to the Netherlands.
Forty-one other people were taken to Platres on Monday evening after arriving from the UK without any papers. Initially they were refused entry but eventually they were allowed through after Transport Minister Yiannis Karousos decided to waive a government order.
On Tuesday, those in Platres complained that they were left to fend for themselves with no health workers to examine them. The mother of one of the students complained to the state broadcaster that they were housed four in each room without soap or any other hygiene products. Among them were people with diabetes who are on a special diet.
Meanwhile, other Cypriots have been left stranded overseas because they cannot secure the necessary certificate. “We can’t stay here anymore. The whole family is here,” Lili Petrou told the state broadcaster from the UK.
So far today three flights have landed at Larnaca from Doha, Athens and Amsterdam. There were 13 passengers in total, ten were allowed to enter and three foreign nationals were sent back to Doha. Most of the passengers were Cypriot.
An Athens flight arrived empty, probably for repatriation purposes. There were six people on the Doha flight, three were sent back. The flight from Amsterdam had six on board, all entered and a flight from Warsaw arrived with one on board who was allowed entry.
No flights have landed at Paphos as yet. A Moscow flight was expected and a Ryanair flight from Stansted is due at 15.40.
Each flight and passenger is being dealt with on an ad hoc basis and the co-ordination centre is at Larnaca, for both airports. Many airlines bringing in empty planes, mostly to fly people out.
