Omicron variant: Canada bans entry from 7 southern African nations
Reacting to the emergence of the Omicron variant of Covid-19, the Canadian government has barred all non-Canadians who have been in seven southern African nations over the past 14 days from entering the country.
This measure will be in place till January 31, 2022 as concerns over the new variant rise globally after the World Health Organization classified it as one of “concern”. No cases related to this variant have been detected in Canada as yet.
These measures come as Canada experiences an increase in new infections, tracking the progress of the pandemic in Europe. The period between November 18 and 25 marked an increase of 9% in average daily cases, as 2,608. Canada recorded 3,055 new infections on Friday, taking the total to 1,782,171 including 29,618 deaths.
The countries that will be impacted by the ban on travel are South Africa, Eswatini, Lesotho, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and Namibia. “Foreign nationals who have travelled in any of these countries within the previous 14 days will not be permitted entry into Canada,” a statement from the country’s health ministry said.
“These new measures are being put in place out of an abundance of caution,” minister of health Jean-Yves Duclos said.
Canadian citizens and permanent residents will be allowed to return to the country but will face a stringent testing and quarantine regimen.
All travellers arriving by air will be required to remain in a designated quarantine facility while they await results of a test conducted upon them on arrival at a Canadian airport. They will have to undergo a 14-day quarantine regardless of vaccination status and will retake the test on the eighth day after they reach Canada.
As there are no direct flights between these southern African nations and Canada, travellers will have to have a negative result of a molecular test done within 72 hours at the last point of departure, the third country, before they are allowed to board an airplane bound for Canada.
In a statement, Canada’s chief public health officer Dr Theresa Tam said that “due to the potential for increased transmissibility, and the possibility of increased resistance to vaccine-induced protection, we are concerned about this new variant and closely monitoring the evolving situation”.
She added that nationally, “the daily case counts have been slowly creeping up so we need to maintain a high degree of caution to avoid a rapid acceleration”.
These developments come as Canadian health authorities started administering doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech paediatric vaccine to children aged between five and 11.