Pakistan has imposed new air travel restrictions in response to the new Omicron variant.
Travel has been restricted from six southern African countries, namely South Africa, Lesotho, Eswatini, Mozambique, Botswana and Namibia, as well as Hong Kong, the National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC) said.
“Complete ban has been placed on direct [and] indirect inbound travel from these countries with immediate effect” the official statement said.
“The emergence of new variant makes it even more urgent to vaccinate all eligible citizens 12 years and older” said Asad Umar who is the NCOC chief
COVID-19 protocol
Pakistani passengers traveling from these countries under extreme emergency circumstances will only be allowed after obtaining exemptions and ensuring the following protocols:
- Vaccination certificate
- Negative PCR report 72 hours before boarding
- Rapid Antigen Test (RAT) on arrival at the airport
- RAT negative cases will undergo 3 days mandatory home quarantine and re-RAT will be conducted on third day
- RAT positive cases will undergo 10 days mandatory quarantine at government or self-paid facilities. PCR test will be conducted on the 10th day in quarantine.
The discovery of the new coronavirus variant has set off alarm bells through much of the world Friday as nations raced to halt air travel.
The World Health Organization has classified the “Omicron” variant as a highly transmissible virus of concern. The variant was first reported to WHO from South Africa on November 24, 2021.
Health experts have said that vaccines will most likely protect against Omicron, but further studies are needed to test the effectiveness of the vaccines on the variant.
If required, BioNTech said it will be able to improve the vaccine to match it more closely to the new variant. “Pfizer and BioNTech have taken actions months ago to be able to adapt the mRNA vaccine within six weeks and ship initial batches within 100 days in the event of an escape variant,” the company said in a statement.