The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) released additional guidance to ensure that travel restrictions are implemented in compliance with the principle of non-refoulement.108 In some cases, EU Member States banned entry to asylum applicants, a move which can raise issues under Articles 18 (right to asylum) and 19 (protection from refoulement) of the Charter, as the following three examples illustrate. On 20 March 2020, the Cypriot coastguards pushed back a boat with approximately 175 Syrians seeking asylum on board, including 30 women and 69 children, the first recorded incident of its kind.109 Hungary suspended admission of asylum seekers to the transit zones located at the Serbian border due to public health risks related to COVID-19,110 whereas Greece had already temporarily suspended access to asylum for March 2020, as migrants and refugees gathered in large numbers at the land border with Turkey.111 Other Member States took a more nuanced approach. Austria, for example, requires applicants coming by air to show evidence of a negative COVID-19 test not older than four days, in the absence of which they would be placed for two weeks in quarantine.112 Amid fears of infection and with airlines cancelling international flights, several EU Member States also suspended operations to remove third-country nationals, including for people detained in pre-removal facilities. Under both EU and ECHR law, pre-removal detention is only justified where there is a realistic prospect of removal within a reasonable time.113 With this in mind, in Italy, the National Guarantor for the Rights of Persons Detained or Deprived of Liberty asked to assess the need for early release.114 More broadly, in light of heightened risk of infections, on 31 March, four UN organisations called for the release of refugees and migrants held in formal and informal places of detention.115 On 26 March 2020, the Council of Europe called on Member States to release rejected asylum seekers and irregular migrants in immigration detention who could not be returned to their countries of origin due to the suspension of return procedures in the context of the Covid-19 outbreak. 24