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Some health officials said that the travel bans may buy some time to figure out how to deal with the new variant. Israel announced the most restrictive ban Saturday, saying it would close its borders to foreign nationals for two weeks.
Britain has restricted travel with those eight nations and Angola, Mozambique and Zambia.Ĭanada, Australia, Russia, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, Oman and Morocco have all announced similar restrictions. The European Union is restricting travel to and from seven countries in southern Africa - Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe - while the United States and South Korea have targeted those countries and Malawi. The Omicron variant is likely to be found in some of those 61 passengers who tested positive, the Dutch authorities said. Sixty-one passengers out of more than 500 on two flights from southern African countries into the Netherlands on Saturday tested positive for the coronavirus and are quarantining in Amsterdam.
See which countries have reported cases of the Omicron variant. Tracking Omicron and Other Coronavirus Variants Pekosz added.Įuropean leaders, already struggling with a surge in Covid-19 cases that has made it once again the epicenter of the pandemic, tried to strike a balance between increasing caution and avoiding panic. “There certainly is a chance that it has already spread globally, but we just don’t know yet,” Mr.
It is likely the variant is already in New York, he said. “There’s been a window of probably about two weeks conservatively that this virus has been spreading ,” Andrew Pekosz, an epidemiologist from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health said in an interview on Saturday. Most confirmed cases of the variant are contained to southern African countries, but there are worries Omicron could have spread more widely before scientists there discovered it. It has mutations that scientists fear could make it more infectious and less susceptible to vaccines - though neither of these effects has yet to be established. Relatively little is known about Omicron. The Czech Republic, Austria, Israel and the Netherlands were all investigating suspected cases of the variant. Omicron, the new variant first detected in Botswana, sent Europe into high alert after cases were detected in the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy and Belgium. Scientists raced to study a new coronavirus variant as several cases were spotted in Europe and governments around the world announced travel restrictions targeting the southern African region where it first emerged, prompting criticism that the continent was yet again bearing the brunt of panicked policies from Western countries. Image At a counter for coronavirus quarantine and test appointments inside Schiphol Airport, the Netherlands, on Saturday, after 61 passengers arriving in the country tested positive for the virus.