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With the emergence of the new mutant “Omicron”, a number of countries in the world have taken measures to protect their citizens from infection with this mutant.

Qatar
announced a new update of travel lists within the travel and return policies, and the Ministry of Public Health added, on Friday, 5 new countries to the exceptional red list after the emergence of the new mutant.

And the exceptional red list became containing 15 countries instead of 10 countries in the latest update on November 12.
And the five newly added countries are:
South Africa,
Botswana,
Lesotho,
Eswatini,
Zimbabwe
. Qatar Airways also announced that, with immediate effect, passengers from South Africa and Zimbabwe will not be accepted on its flights, and the national carrier also announced the addition of Angola and Zambia to the list of countries that suspended the operation of flights from them. Due to the outbreak of the new mutant of the “Covid-19” virus, Omicron.

qatar airways

Kuwait 
announced today the suspension of direct commercial flights from 9 African countries due to the new mutation.

Morocco 
The Moroccan authorities decided to suspend all direct flights for travelers in the direction of the Kingdom, for a period of two weeks, starting tomorrow, Monday, at eleven at night and 59 minutes.

Australia 
In Australia, the New South Wales Ministry of Health announced, on Sunday, that two cases of the “Omicron” mutant were discovered after travelers from South Africa arrived in Sydney.

The ministry said that the travelers are subject to isolation along with 12 other passengers coming from South Africa, and added that both cases are for two people who received the full vaccination and did not show symptoms.
Australia has banned entry to foreigners who have traveled to nine South African countries in the past 14 days, including South Africa, Lesotho, Botswana and Zimbabwe.

South Korea South Korea has 
imposed restrictions on travelers from eight South African countries, the Agency for Disease Control and Prevention announced on Saturday.

The agency said foreigners traveling from South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Eswatini, Malawi and Mozambique are banned from entering South Korea.

It added that the issuance of visas to citizens of those countries has been suspended until further notice.

Korean citizens entering from those countries must quarantine in a government-designated facility for 10 days.

Europe 
Europe is also imposing frantic travel bans and scrambling to ramp up its coronavirus sequencing capabilities after several countries on the continent reported suspected cases of the omicron mutant.

A suspected case was discovered in Innsbruck, western Austria, after a recently arrived traveler from South Africa tested positive for COVID-19, the Tyrol state government said on Saturday.

The authorities said that samples of the injured were sent to the capital, Vienna, and results are expected in the coming days.

America 
The chief infectious disease expert in the United States, Dr. Anthony Fauci, said it was possible that the new mutation was already present in his country but had not yet been discovered.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed that no known cases of the “omicron” mutation have been identified in the United States, and that if the mutation appears, the agency expects cases to be quickly identified through the country’s diverse surveillance system.

Britain 
The Secretary of State for Health in the United Kingdom, Sajid Javid, said that the two cases of infection that were discovered in the United Kingdom are linked to travel to South Africa, the region where the “Omicron” mutant was detected for the first time.

He added that the two infected individuals are subject to isolation while more tests are conducted and their contacts are traced.

On Friday, the World Health Organization called on countries to strengthen surveillance and sequencing efforts to better understand the mutant of the Corona virus.

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