Canada announced Friday the lifting of a ban on foreign travelers from 10 African countries, while reimposing testing requirements.
The travel restriction on flights from South Africa, Mozambique, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Eswatini, Namibia, Nigeria, Malawi and Egypt will end at 11:59 p.m. on Saturday (Canadian time), Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos told a news conference.
Also read: Angola lifts travel ban for fellow Southern African countries
The restriction had been announced last month “to slow the arrival of Omicron in Canada and buy us some time,” he said. But with Omicron now spreading within Canada it is “no longer needed.”
Pre-arrival negative PCR tests for all travelers were also reinstated as of December 21 while the total average daily Covid case count, meanwhile, has jumped by 45 percent in the past week to about 5,000.
