Indonesia has announced an entry ban on travellers from
Nigeria and seven other African countries to curb the spread of the Omicron
COVID-19 variant first recorded in South Africa days ago.
Other countries affected by the travel ban include
travellers who have been to South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Lesotho,
Mozambique, Eswatini or Nigeria in the past 14 days.
The restriction takes effect on Monday and would be
evaluated every two weeks, Coordinating Minister Luhut Pandjaitan said at a
news conference on Sunday, according to Reuters.
“Omicron has spread to more countries, so to respond to
these developments, today the government wants to carry out the following
policies,” Pandjaitan said.
Indonesian citizens entering Indonesia from the listed
African countries and Hong Kong will also now have to quarantine in designated
facilities for 14 days, Pandjaitan added.
All other travellers entering the country will have to
quarantine for seven days compared to three days previously, he added.
The World Health Organisation had on Friday declared the new
COVID-19 strain first discovered in South Africa to be a variant of concern and
renamed it Omicron.
The classification puts Omicron into the most-troubling
category of COVID-19 variants, along with the globally-dominant Delta, plus its
weaker rivals Alpha, Beta and Gamma.
The United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union
and some countries in Asia have since imposed flight ban on Southern African
countries including Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia,
South Africa, and Zimbabwe, even as the South African government said it is
being “punished” and unfairly treated for sounding the alarm.
Though the Omicron COVID-19 variant has not been recorded in
Nigeria, virologists have called on the Federal Government to be swift and
impose a flight ban on South Africa, to forestall the incursion of the lethal
variant into the country with over 200 million people but the government has
said that it is still observing the situation.
The President of the African Development Bank, Dr Akinwumi
Adesina, on Sunday had earlier said Africa was not the source of COVID-19 which
was first discovered in China two years ago, adding that the continent should
not be punished for the Omicron COVID-19 variant and other mutations that occur
randomly anywhere in the world.
Advertise on NigerianEye.com to reach thousands of our daily users
No comments
Post a Comment
Kindly drop a comment below.
(Comments are moderated. Clean comments will be approved immediately)
Advert Enquires - Reach out to us at NigerianEye@gmail.com