EasyJet on Monday said it was cancelling flights to and from the UK after high COVID rates in Europe left the British airline with a lack of staff.

“As a result of the current high rates of COVID infections across Europe, like all businesses, EasyJet is experiencing higher than usual levels of employee sickness,” the carrier said.

After cancelling more than 200 flights over the weekend, EasyJet said it had preemptively cancelled 60 for Monday.The airline noted that it was a “small proportion” of the more than 1,645 flights planned for the day.

“We have taken action to mitigate this through the rostering of additional standby crew, however, with the current levels of sickness we have also decided to make some cancellations in advance,” EasyJet said in a statement.

In the UK, rates of COVID infection have hit a record high, according to official data on Friday. Some 4.9 million people in the UK are estimated to have had COVID-19 in the week ending March 26, or 600,000 more than the previous week, the Office for National Statistics said.

The WHO said that several European countries, including Britain, France, Germany and Italy, lifted their COVID curbs too “brutally”

The World Health Organisation has said that several European countries, including Britain, France, Germany and Italy, lifted their COVID curbs too “brutally” and are seeing a rise in cases, likely owing to the more transmissible BA2 variant.