Kenya Airways has cut the number of flights to and from Uganda’s Entebbe International Airport due to low passenger traffic and surge of COVID-19 cases in the east African country.

Vianney Luggya, communications officer for Uganda Civil Aviation Authority, said Kenya’s national carrier has reduced the number of flights from 12 a week to nine over low loads of passengers due to strict government pandemic containment measures. 

“It’s a normal thing because right now passenger traffic is low compared to what it was before COVID-19. So when passenger traffic is low, airlines normally make decisions based on what they think,” Luggya said.

The development comes weeks after RwandAir suspended its flights to Entebbe International Airport, about 40 kilometers south of the capital Kampala until further notice due to a surge in novel coronavirus cases in the country. 

Uganda is currently grappling with the virulent second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, which continues to devastate the country.

As of July 1, Uganda had registered 82,852 cases of COVID-19, with 54,845 recoveries and 1,910 deaths since the first case was reported in March last year, according to the ministry of health figures.