Story By: Lee Bullen, Sub-Editor: Lee Bullen,  Agency: Asia Wire Report

Over 150 passengers on a Scandinavian Airlines flight will have to quarantine for 10 days after their plane landed just one minute after midnight when Norway switched France to a ‘red zone’ destination.

The SAS (Scandinavian Airlines) flight returned to Norway from France at 12.01am on 7th August, just one minute after France became a ‘red zone’ region.

Norwegian Ministry of Health adviser Elisabeth Johansen said: “The change to the red zone was from midnight included, so midnight exactly or one minute past midnight, hence these passengers must go into quarantine.”

Johansen added that the 158 passengers on board will be able to quarantine at home and should not stay in hotels at the airport.

Last week, Norway announced that it was making France a ‘red zone’ along with Switzerland, Monaco and the Czech Republic due to a spike in COVID-19 cases in the four countries.

The countries had all crossed the threshold of 20 new cases per 100,000 inhabitants over the last 14 days, a level that Norway had set to establish self-isolation measures.

Norway has been experiencing a spike in cases with an incidence rate of seven new cases per 100,000 in the past two weeks, according to data from WHO Europe.

In comparison, neighbours Sweden, which never imposed a draconian lockdown, has seen their cases plummet by 54 percent since late June, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

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