Ulaanbaatar, Oct 14 (IANS): More than 24,500 Mongolian nationals have returned home so far since the Covid-19 outbreak, the country's National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) said on Wednesday.

"Since the pandemic outbreak, our country has evacuated a total of 24,553 nationals on chartered flights and buses or trains from Covid-hit countries," Batmunkh Uuganbayar, deputy head of the NEMA, said at a press conference.

"We planned to repatriate 2,700 stranded nationals from abroad on 11 chartered flights this month, and over 1,500 of them have been repatriated so far," Uuganbayar added.

The Asian country has confirmed 320 Covid-19 cases so far, all imported, Xinhua news agency reported.

Thanks to the early introduction of social distancing and rigid health protocols for cross-border flows, no local transmissions or deaths have been reported in Mongolia so far.

The country entered a heightened state of readiness on February 12 to prevent the spread of Covid-19, including the suspension of international passenger flights.