Canada Announced 5 New Travel Restrictions For Most Deadly “Omicorn” COVID Variant!

Today, Government of Canada announced 5 new travel restrictions to deal with reportedly most deadly and contagious COVID variant named as Omicorn. This comes into effect immediately and will stay in place until January 31, 2022. Omicorn with generic name, B.1.1.529 was designated by the WHO as a variant of concern earlier today after this variant spread across South Africa. Some experts believe that variant is already in Canada.

Click here to watch official announcement.

Prior to Canada, Britain already banned the travelers from the Countries affected by this variant. Furthermore, Premier of Alberta – Jason Kenney called upon the federal government to follow the example of England and take proactive steps. Apart from U.K., India, Japan, Israel and the European Union also imposed travel bans on some South African nations today.

“I call on the federal government to follow Britain’s lead by banning travel from countries where this dangerous new Covid-19 variant is circulating. Canada must not repeat the mistake of its open-borders policy at the beginning of the global pandemic.” – Kenney said first thing in the morning via a tweet.

Following this, Federal Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos made the announcement during federal update on COVID response. He made following 5 announcements:

1. Banning foreign nationals from entering Canada, who have travelled through South Africa, Lesotho, Botswana, Eswatini, Zimbabwe, Namibia and Mozambique in the last 14 days.
2. For all those who have arrived in Canada in last 14 days will have to quarantine now and do a quarantine test. Such people will have to stay in quarantine until they receive negative COVID test.
3. Canadian Citizens, Permanent residents, and those who have right to enter Canada will be tested on-arrival and quarantine until they get negative COVID test. After getting a negative COVID test, then they will proceed to complete full 14-day quarantine and will be subject to day-8 COVID test.
4. As there are not direct flights from these countries, Canadians will have to get negative COVID test from transiting country before proceeding their journey to Canada.
5. A travel advisory will be issued to not travel to Southern Africa for the time being.