Ottawa asking COVID-19 trial for several passengers, advising specialists on booster shots

Key takeaways:

Steps are in reply to the rise of the omicron variant.
Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos stated the latest testing requirements will go into impact in the next few days.

Testing requirements for travellers to go into force in several days:

Incoming air passengers from every nation besides the United States will be asked to take COVID-19 tests when landing in Canada, the federal government declared today.

The tests will be asked of all passengers, despite their vaccination status, Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos announced today. The requirement will also apply to Canadian citizens and permanent citizens.

Incoming passengers will have to self-isolate until they get the outcomes of the test.

Duclos stated the new testing requirement will go into force “as quickly and as much as possible over the next few days.” Source – cbc.ca

The new step is part of Canada’s increasingly growing plan to hold the spread of the omicron variant of the novel coronavirus.

The variant’s rise last week has urged the return of border closings, travel limitations and sterner testing conditions over the world.

Canada’s effort to hold the variant now involves limitations on travellers from 10 countries, each of them in Africa. The government called seven countries to its limited list last week, and today attached Egypt, Malawi and Nigeria.

Incoming passengers from those 10 nations will have to isolate in assigned facilities, officials announced. Other travellers will be permitted to quarantine at their house or other places.

Public health officials stated the countries were singled out because of a greater than a normal number of positive test outcomes amid travellers coming from those nations.

But the start of travel limitations has been scrutinised as weak and discriminatory toward African countries where vaccines are not publicly available. There are also concerns that a global backlash upon the country could prevent other nations from reporting future variants.