Oman has issued a complete stop for all foreign citizens to enter the Sultanate as well as a stop for Omani citizens to leave the country, effective as from 18 March 2020, 12pm local time.

All persons who have entered the Sultanate after 4 March 2020 are subject to measures of quarantine that actually consist of a compulsory 14-day self-quarantine. Based on the data given at the immigration travelers are contacted by the Omani authorities and asked to respect this measure.

The Ministry of Health of the Sultanate of Oman has established a contact center concerning Covid-19 with a direct telephone number +968 2444 1999 and a website informing on the latest measures and announcements www.moh.gov.om.

The transit zones in the airports of Oman Airports in Oman are still open for all persons flying via the Sultanate.

The Omani authorities have kindly requested the remaining tourists in the country to leave the Sultanate in the coming days. The Swiss Federal Council has also called all Swiss citizens still travelling abroad to go back to Switzerland as soon as possible. The Embassy requests all Swiss citizens that are in Oman as tourists or for business or educational reasons to follow this call.

IMPORTANT: the organisation of your trip back to Switzerland lies in your very own responsibility. Flights with commercial airlines might only be available for a short period of time as airlines are continuously reducing their flight frequency. It is therefore possible that you have to find alternative, maybe complicated routes back to Switzerland and to pay for the additional cost this might cause.

The current situation of the flight connections out of Muscat is the following (due to the constant reduction of available flights there is no full guarantee of the offer):

• SWISS has cancelled all flights between Muscat and Zurich until 24 April.
• Oman Air has reduced the frequency of their daily direct flights to Zurich to four flights / week.  The next planned flights take place on 22, 23 and 25 March (all leaving Muscat at 2.45pm)
• Currently it is still possible to fly with Qatar Airways via Doha to Zurich and Geneva, with Emirates via Dubai to Zurich and with Etihad via Abu Dhabi to Zurich.   

For further inquiries concerning flights please use the hotline of Muscat International Airport (www.muscatairport.co.om): +968 2435 1234.

Please find the travel advice for Oman and the focus «Coronavirus (COVID-19)» under the following link: Travel Advicel. This site also allows you to subscribe for free to all updates for the travel advice and to register your trip on ITINERIS in order to receive an email in case of important changes in the situation described above.