COVID-19: US places ban on Brazil arrivals as virus infections increase

The United State of America has placed a ban on all travel into the US by non-citizens who have been in Brazil as cases of infections and death from COVID-19 continues to increase.

“We hope that it will be temporary, but because of the situation in Brazil, we’re going to take every step necessary to protect the American people,” National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien told CBS’s Face the Nation programme on Sunday.

Brazil registered 653 deaths on Sunday and an additional 15,813 cases, bringing the total to 363,211.

Writing on Twitter, Filipe Martins, a foreign affairs adviser to President Jair Bolsonaro played down the move saying the ban was “nothing specific against Brazil” and the US was following “preciously established parameters”.

Meanwhile, the government of the United Kingdom has announced that 900 of its nationals stranded in Nigeria due to the outbreak of the deadly COVID-19 disease are set for evacuation.

This was revealed in a statement on the website of the UK government issued on Sunday which informed that the stranded Britons will return home on three chartered flights.