Royal Air Maroc Announces Special Flights From Morocco To France, Spain and Mauritania

Rabat- The Moroccan national carrier, Royal Air Maroc, announced today it is preparing special flights from Morocco to France, Spain and Mauritania between December 7 and December 10.

RAM said on its official Twitter, “We inform our Customers that special flights (under special authorization) from Morocco to France, Spain, and Mauritania are scheduled from December 07, 2021 to December 10,2021.”

RAM previously confirmed it will be carrying special flights from Morocco to Belgium, Canada, Spain, and Italy between December 4-6.

Low-cost Irish carrier Ryanair also decided to cancel all its flights until February 1, 2022. The decision has left 230,000 Ryanair clients facing disruptions to their travel plans.

The news comes after Morocco’s decision on November 28 to suspend all flights from and to Morocco for two weeks as a precaution against a potential outbreak of Omicron, the new strain of the COVID-19 virus.

Morocco’s government cited alarming reports surrounding Omicron in Europe and southern Africa when announcing its two-week flight suspension of all flights.

Several countries took similar decisions, banning travel from countries with new COVID-19 variants.

Many health experts said that Omicron can highly lower vaccine effectiveness and trigger a new and alarming wave, and that preventive measures are the only way to preserve the progress Morocco has made in the fight against the pandemic in recent months.

“The lack of information about the new variant is creating serious confusion worldwide,” government spokesperson, Mustapha Baitas, said on December 2, denying the identification of cases of the newly emerged COVID-19 variant, Omicron, in Morocco.

Amid lack of necessary data, Moroccan laboratories have already started research to assess whether the vaccines used in Morocco are effective against Omicron.

Tayeb Hamdi, a health professional and researcher in health policies and systems, said this week that Morocco has taken the necessary measures to reduce the risk of importing cases of the new variant of Omicron.

The Omicron variant was first detected in South Africa and reported to the World Health Organization (WHO) last week.

Several European and African countries reported cases of contamination with the new variant.

The WHO said Omicron has an unprecedented number of spike mutations, some of which are dangerous for their potential impact on the trajectory of the pandemic.