The United Arab Emirates (UAE) on Sunday allowed passengers holding passports of several SAARC countries including India to enter the country on a tourist visa provided they haven’t visited or been in these countries in the last 14 days .

The exemption is provided to passport holders of India, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Uganda and Nigeria, reported Gulf News quoting flydubai website.

The facility has been exteded to Nepal, Nigeria, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Uganda, other than India, the Gulf News reported. Presently, only UAE citizens and transit passengers are allowed to fly to the UAE, due to the coronavirus outbreak.

Approval of tourist visas for Indian passport holders, who have not been in the country in the last fortnight, comes as the UAE is slowly opening up its arrivals.

All flyers will have to undergo a Polymerase Chain Reaction test on the day of arrival and on the ninth day after arrival in the UAE. Meanwhile, the UAE has said it will accept passengers from Pakistani airports Islamabad, Karachi and Lahore. Earlier, arrivals from Pakistan were only allowed to transit passengers.

The coronavirus has claimed 2,018 lives alongwith 708,302 confirmed infections in the the UAE, according to Johns Hopkins University