Australia Imposes Travel Curbs On 9 Southern African Nations Over Omicron Strain. Effective immediately, the government will ban non-citizens who have been in those countries from entering and will require supervised 14-day quarantines for Australian citizens and their dependents returning from the countries. Australia will also suspend all flights from nine southern African countries for two weeks. Australia on Saturday imposed new restrictions on people who have been in nine southern African countries, as the new Omicron variant of COVID-19 raises concerns about a further wave of the pandemic.
The countries are South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Lesotho, Eswatini, Seychelles, Malawi, and Mozambique. The government will ban non-citizens who have been in those countries from entering and will require supervised 14-day quarantines for Australian citizens and their dependents returning from the countries. Anyone who has already arrived in Australia and who has been to any of those countries within the past 14 days must immediately isolate and be tested.
WHO Warns Covid variant Omicron Risk ‘Very High’
Twenty travelers from South Africa are in quarantine in the Northern Territory’s Howard Springs facility, 19 of whom have returned negative coronavirus tests. It is not yet known if the one positive test result is the Omicron variant. The discovery of the variant – which has a spike protein dramatically different from the one that existing vaccines are based on – triggered global alarm. Australia early this month eased its international border restrictions for the first time during the pandemic allowing fully vaccinated residents to return to the country without quarantine after higher vaccination levels.
Australia had largely stamped out infections for most of this year until an outbreak of the highly infectious Delta variant in late June spread rapidly across its east. About 205,000 cases and 1,985 deaths have been recorded so far, lower than many other countries in the developed world.
