Iceland will host up to 600 American and Canadian air force personnel for the next few weeks.

According to RUV Iceland, 250 airmen from the US Air Force had already arrived last week to take over NATO airpsace patrols and 300 Canadian airmen are in the country for submarine patrols. The two missions are said to be unrelated.

Ásgeir Erlingsson, the Icelandic coastguard press officer, said that the reason the deployments are so big is the strong COVID-19 quarantine rules in place, which are even stricter than for civilians arriving in Iceland at the moment.

There are now double crews in Iceland temporarily and the handover takes three or four weeks thanks to quaranine. Crew handovers at the Keflavík NATO base usually take just a few days.