Without prior permission from the authorities, flights to and from Ethiopia and Vietnam are also banned.

Saudi Arabia has stated that it will suspend flights to the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Ethiopia and Vietnam to prevent variants of the coronavirus.

The move announced on Saturday was announced seven weeks after the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia banned travel abroad for more than a year and allowed fully immunized citizens to travel abroad.

The state news agency SPA quoted an official from the Ministry of the Interior as saying that flights to these three countries will be suspended from 11pm on Sunday. It added that Saudi citizens and residents returning from these countries will be required to quarantine for 14 days.

Citizens will be prohibited from “traveling directly or indirectly without the prior permission of the authorities.”

The reason for this decision was “the ongoing outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic and the spread of a new mutant virus strain”, it added, but did not explicitly mention the Delta variants that are increasingly emerging globally.

Delta was originally discovered in India and now exists in at least 85 countries/regions. It is the most infectious of all coronavirus variants discovered so far.

The UAE-many Saudis, especially Dubai’s popular leisure destination-announced last week that it had recorded cases of Delta Air Lines and suspended flights to and from India.

At the same time, Saudi Arabia has imposed major restrictions on the annual Hajj. It has officially recorded more than 490,000 coronavirus cases, including nearly 7,850 deaths.