Tashkent, Uzbekistan (UzDaily.com) -- The Chinese civil aviation regulator will temporarily suspend flights of the Uzbekistan Airways flight on the Tashkent-Xi’an route due to the fact that 11 passengers on board the flight of this airline on this route on 5 November showed a COVID-19 test positive result, Xinhua reported.

The suspension of flights of flight HY501 from the Uzbek capital Tashkent to the city of Xi’an (the administrative center of Shaanxi ptovince, Northwest China) will run for four weeks starting from 23 November, according to a statement posted on the website of the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC).

On 4 June, CAAC put in place a reward and suspension mechanism for international passenger traffic to further contain the spread of COVID-19.

According to the CAAC document, if all air passengers arriving in China have negative tests for nucleic acids of the new type of coronavirus for three weeks in a row, the airline will receive permission to increase the number of flights to two per week.

If the number of passengers who test positive for COVID-19 reaches 5, then this flight will be suspended for a week. And if the number of such passengers reaches 10, then flights on this route will be suspended for four weeks.

The agency also said that Uzbekistan Airways has no right to transfer the original quotas of flight HY501 to other routes.