Rabat bans travel from 4 more states over COVID variant

RABAT, Morocco

Morocco has banned air travel from four more countries as of Tuesday after the detection of the first case of the more contagious variant of the novel coronavirus.

The Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the ban includes Brazil, Australia, Ireland and New Zealand.

Rabat has earlier banned travel from the UK, Denmark and South Africa over the variant.

On Monday, the Moroccan Health Ministry confirmed the first imported case of the virus variant in a Moroccan passenger coming from Ireland.

The North African nation has so far registered 460,144 COVID-19 cases, including 7,977 deaths, and more than 435,686 recoveries.

Ahmed Asmar contributed to this report from Ankara