Canada bans travellers from southern Africa due to new variant

With a new COVID-19 variant of concern on the rise, Canada is banning visitors who travelled through southern Africa.

During a media conference Friday, Transport Minister Omar Alghabra announced the ban on travellers applies to Lesotho, Botswana, Eswatini, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Namibia and Mozambique.

Canadians who went to that region in the past 14 days must now quarantine.

The United States and countries in the European Union also have banned travel from those African nations.

The new variant, which has been called Omicron by the World Health Organization, first was detected in South Africa.

“The emergence of new variants is unfortunately not unexpected and the concerns raised by this variant further underscore the need to be vigilant,” Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada’s chief medical health officer, said during the media conference.

“Provincial laboratories across Canada have been alerted to this new variant and have searched for possible detections, but to date, there are no indications of the variant’s presence in Canada.”

Global Affairs is to issue an advisory to discourage non-essential travel to South Africa and neighbouring countries.

Currently there aren’t any direct flights from South Africa to Canada.

Stock markets around the world dipped after news of the Omicron variant broke.

— With files from The Canadian Press