Dhaka declares fresh travel rules

Bangladesh has announced new travel rules, making a 14-day institutional quarantine mandatory for all travellers from seven African countries after emergence of new Omicron variant of Covid-19. The restriction will come into effect from Saturday. The countries are Botswana, Eswatini, Ghana, Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe, the Civil Aviation Authority of Bangladesh (CAAB) said on Thursday in its updated travel restriction notification. 

The restriction came after neighbouring India on Thursday reported its first two known Covid-19 cases of the Omicron variant, discovered in two men in the southern state of Karnataka.

According to the new travel rules in Bangladesh, all passengers from these seven African countries will need to stay at government-designated hotels at their own expense. On the seventh and 14th day of quarantine, they will have to undergo RT-PCR tests at their own expense, it said.

 If any passenger tests positive for Covid on the seventh day, they will be separated for further isolation, while Covid-negative travellers will continue their quarantine till the 14th day.

Depending on the RT-PCR test results on the 14th day of their quarantine, Covid-negative passengers will be released.

The passengers returning from these seven countries will need to show proof of hotel bookings in Bangladesh during check-in, said CAAB.

With changes to a previous guideline, incoming passengers from all other destinations, except children below 12 years, will need to mandatorily possess a Covid-negative certificate, with the test conducted within 48 hours of their flight departure, it said.

The new coronavirus variant Omicron has become dominant in South Africa and is driving a sharp increase in new infections, reports BBC.

Some 11,500 new Covid infections were registered in the latest daily figures.

That is a sharp rise on the 8,500 cases confirmed the previous day.

By contrast, daily infections were averaging between 200 and 300 in mid-November, a top South African scientist told the BBC.

Omicron has now been detected in at least 24 countries around the world, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

Those who have already had other variants of coronavirus do not appear to be protected against Omicron but vaccines are still believed to protect against severe disease, according to top scientists from the global health body and South Africa’s National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD).