First of all as regarding Azerbaijan’s counter efforts to prevent the spread of COVID-19, Azerbaijan prioritized early identification of cases to prevent the spread of COVID-19 and optimization of care to all patients considering the recommendations of international organizations and applying the shared experience by different countries including the Republic of Korea.

Almost all common measures such as closing the borders, keeping social distancing, restricting citizens’ movement and preserving temporary quarantine regime have been applied in Azerbaijan. A unique “message permission system” was applied in which residents must give advance notice before leaving their place of residence via a free SMS message by indicating the reason of leave. Particularly, many Azerbaijani citizens, private and public organizations voluntarily provided financial assistance to the Coronavirus Response Fund established by the initiative of President Ilham Aliyev who first contributed his annual salary to the mentioned fund.

With regard to Korean Government’s corresponding actions to prevent the spread of COVID-19, Korea’s fight with Covid-19 and implemented measures in that direction have been extraordinary and pretty much effective. Firstly, I would cite conducting one of the world’s largest scaled (to population ratio), accurate and immediate diagnostics of the virus to detect patients even with mild symptoms in order to prevent further spread of the virus and lower the possible mortality rate; Secondly, thorough examination process has been in place over several rounds at the border gates of the country from the very entrance to the final departure stage; Thirdly, implementation of pioneering drive-through and walkthrough systems and furthermore, classification of severe and mild symptomed patients to implement a designated treatment for them in separate facilities; And most importantly, I would like to underline wide and efficient use of information and communication technologies to fight spread of the virus (real-time notification system about newly infected patients, various apps and maps on spread of virus, just closed facilities, mask purchases, etc.).

Last but not least about removing entry restrictions for Korean travelers, I would like to underline that the Government of Azerbaijan has never applied any entry restrictions specifically imposed on travellers from Korea.

However, due to threat of the rapid spread of COVID-19 across Azerbaijan, on 5 April 2020, the Cabinet of Ministers of the Republic of Azerbaijan completely suspended access to the country's territory by land and air except for cargo transportation.