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Over 55,000 Poles flown home by gov’t amid pandemic

06.04.2020 00:55
Over 55,000 Poles have returned home on 388 special flights chartered by the government amid a coronavirus pandemic, officials have said.
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Image by Rudy and Peter Skitterians from Pixabay
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State news agency PAP cited the foreign ministry in Warsaw as saying that Poles had been brought home from 71 airports around the world in the operation, which started on March 15 and ended on Sunday.

Michał Dworczyk, head of the Polish Prime Minister’s Office, said that the operation was being turned into an initiative called Cargo for Poland to fly in supplies from China.

"As part of an air bridge created between the Republic of Poland and the Republic of China, we are transporting essential materials to fight the pandemic and equipment ensuring the safety of Polish medical services," Dworczyk wrote on Twitter.

Deputy Foreign Minister Szymon Szynkowski vel Sęk has said that such flights were often the only chance for Poles to return home from regions around the world where scheduled connections were disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic.

National carrier LOT, which has been running the operation together with the Polish government, has brought citizens home from countries including Cuba, Argentina, Australia, Thailand, China and Sri Lanka, public broadcaster Polish Radio’s IAR news agency reported.

Poland on March 15 closed its borders to non-residents and suspended scheduled international passenger air connections in an effort to stem the coronavirus outbreak.

The government later declared a “state of epidemic" and announced that the country’s borders would stay shut until April 13.

A total of 4,102 people have tested positive for the COVID-19 disease in Poland, with 94 deaths from the coronavirus so far, officials said on Sunday afternoon.

(pk/gs)

Source: PAP/IAR 

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