Canada announced on Friday that it would ban the entry into the country of all foreigners who, in the past 14 days, have traveled to seven southern African countries due to the emergence of a new variant of the coronavirus called “omicrón”.
The measure was announced today at a press conference by Canadian Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos, who also said all Canadians who have traveled through southern Africa will need a test negative before you can ship to Canada.
Once in Canada, Canadian travelers will need to stay in an isolation hotel and get tested again for the virus. Once they receive a negative result, travelers will need to self-isolate at home for 10 days.
Additionally, travelers who are already in Canada but have traveled to southern Africa in recent weeks will need to be tested for the virus and be isolated at home until they test negative.
Canada currently does not have direct flights with the seven southern African countries affected by the measure: South Africa, Mozambique, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Lesotho and Eswatini.
The announcement of the restrictions comes just as the World Health Organization (WHO) today declared the new variant of the coronavirus detected in South Africa as a “risk variant” and named it literally. Greek omicrón.
WHO experts have pointed out that the new variant appears to be more contagious than the previous ones, although there is still no data to determine whether it is more or less resistant to covid-19 vaccines.
So far, the omicron variant has been detected in South Africa, Botswana, Hong Kong (China) and Belgium.
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