Hong Kong, Jun 29 (IANS): The Hong Kong government has announced that from July 1, all passenger flights from Britain will be suspended in view of the latest Covid-19 situation in the latter country.

In a statement on Monday, the government said that decision was taken as the pandemic situation rebounded recently in Britain with the spread of the Delta variant, reports Xinhua news agency.

It added that a number of cases imported from Britain involving variants have also been detected in Hong Kong over the past few days.

Hong Kong will also at the same time classify Britain, which is currently a "very high-risk" place, as "extremely high-risk" to restrict persons who have stayed in that country for more than two hours from boarding passenger flights for the city, the statement said.

Considering that the pandemic situation is still unstable in existing extremely high-risk places, which are Brazil, India, Indonesia, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines and South Africa, the existing restrictions on the aforementioned places will continue.