Many countries mulling over travel ban to curb Omicron variant

Kathmandu: The US government has restricted travel rules from Wednesday to prevent the spreading spree of the Omicron variant of Covid-19 as Nigeria informed about the rapid spread of the Omicron variant in recent weeks.

According to the new tightened rules, air travellers to the US will encounter tougher rules of Covid-19 testing.

The Nigeria Cente for Disease Control without mentioning the name of the country of origin said that a variant of Omicron was identified in October from travellers travelling to Nigeria.

It may be recalled that it was South Africa that had reported the Omicron variant for the first time after which most of the countries have tightened their borders for travellers.

However, the data shows that this variant had already been spreading around the world which could be contagious at an alarming rate in the upcoming days across the globe.

Japan has already reported its second case of variant despite putting a ban on foreign travellers.

So. countries like Japan, Portugal, Sweden and Uzbekistan including Hong Kong have already tightened travel across their borders in these connections.

The World Health Organization (WHO) admitted that such travel bans can hardly stop the contagious nature of the variant. It further said over 56 countries are likely to join the list of nations banning travels to their countries to contain the Omicron variant.

Health Ministry urges people not to travel abroad

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Health has called upon all Nepalese people to avoid travelling abroad unless it is too urgent.

Issuing a press statement Wednesday, the Ministry said serious precautions should be taken to prevent the entry of a new variant of Omicron in Nepal where it has not been detected so far.