Omicron at Schiphol Airport is chaotic for 18 hours

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Paula Zimmerman On November 25, while wandering in the waiting room of the Cape Town International Airport, she saw news of a worrisome variant of the new coronavirus on her mobile phone. “Without a name, we didn’t know it was more or less contagious,” she recalled. Zimmerman turned to her husband and said that the couple was lucky to be able to take their flight from South Africa to the Netherlands, as they will land at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport on the morning of November 26. The flight went smoothly, and when night fell one day, Zimmermann and her other passengers were going to spend a weekend in the Netherlands. At 10:35 on November 26, KLM flight KL598 from Cape Town to Amsterdam arrived 20 minutes earlier than planned.

However, the plane did not taxi to the normal gate, but took a different route. “They drove us to a remote area of ​​the airport,” said businessman Paul Rebel, who was also on the plane and had traveled to the Netherlands to attend his mother’s funeral. The pilot’s voice crackled through the plane’s speakers: no one could get off the plane because the Dutch government had imposed a travel ban on South Africa. The ban was originally scheduled to take effect at noon that day-less than 90 minutes. Flight KL598 has fallen into a strange variant state.

“I think they deliberately kept us on the plane until after 12 o’clock and then released us to the airport,” Rebel said.A KLM spokesperson stated that the airline had no choice but to comply with the Dutch government and GGD, Netherlands Health Service. The spokesperson said: “Passengers are not allowed to disembark until the Dutch government and GGD have obtained permission.” “The only thing we can do is to obey and catch the passengers.”

Flight KL598 and another flight KL592 from Johannesburg to Schiphol Airport flew over an invisible wall.When Zimmermann, Rebel and their other passengers flew north to the Netherlands, South African health authorities alerted the world to a potentially dangerous new variant-what we now call OmronIn response, most parts of the world have closed their borders—inadvertently leaving 624 people on the tarmac. While flying over Europe, the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen (Ursula von der Leyen) Suggest to pull “Emergency brakes to stop air travel” from southern Africa to Europe. Then the two planes landed.

It may have a name now, but we still know a lot about Omicron. Despite this, most parts of the world are afraid of the potential of a more contagious vaccine to evade mutation and act quickly to try to stop its spread. The European Union, the United Kingdom and the United States have imposed travel bans on several southern African countries. Israel and Japan have closed their borders to all foreigners. Governments and scientists are still waiting to see what Omicron has done to our planet and our population.

“At first I was a little shocked because I thought it had to be related to terrorism,” Zimmerman said. “The captain explained that it was about this new variant, and the government didn’t want us to enter this country. Then I thought,’Well, you know, it will be okay. I guess.’ They said it would take about half an hour and we might go The car is tested.”



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