Bangladeshis travelling to the United Arab Emirates no longer need to have a negative result for a Covid-19 RT-PCR test done no more than 6 hours before departure.
The directive came into effect at 10am on Tuesday, said the Civil Aviation Authority of Bangladesh.
Earlier, passengers were required to do two PCR tests — one 48 hours before the flight and another one no more than six hours before.
The National Technical Advisory Committee (NTAC) on Covid-19 on February 16 recommended relaxing obligatory Covid RT-PCR test for people travelling abroad by air.
The necessity of the test for fully vaccinated air passengers should be determined in line with the requirement of the destination country, it said.
The NTAC also recommended allowing travellers, vaccinated at least 14 days before travelling, to enter Bangladesh.
It also suggested that unvaccinated passengers must undergo an RT-PCR test 72 hours before travelling.
The committee made the recommendations during its 56th meeting, held virtually, in light of recent developments around the world.
Emirates, the flag carrier of the UAE, had earlier barred passengers from Bangladesh from travelling to Dubai as their final destination due to a lack of RT-PCR testing facilities at airports.
On September 1, 2021, Emirates on its website said travel to Dubai was ‘currently not possible’ as rapid PCR testing facilities were not available at Bangladeshi airports.
The health authorities in Bangladesh started testing activities on a trial basis at Dhaka airport on September 26.
On September 28, the UAE cleared the standard operating procedure of the rt-PCR tests at Dhaka’s Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport, much to the delight of migrant workers stranded in Bangladesh.
Then on September 30, airlines announced the resumption of flights from Dhaka to Abu Dhabi and Dubai as their final destination.