HONG KONG (AP) — Hong Kong's government says it will ban all passenger flights from the U.K. starting Thursday as it seeks to curb the spread of new variants of the coronavirus.

It said in a statement Monday that the U.K. has been classified as "extremely high risk.“

Under the classification, people who have stayed in the U.K. for more than two hours will be restricted from boarding passenger flights to Hong Kong.

The statement says the flight ban was issued because of the “recent rebound of the epidemic situation in the U.K. and the widespread delta variant virus strain there."