The Canadian government on Friday announced the lifting of a ban on foreigners travelling from Nigeria and nine other African countries.
Jean-Yves Duclos, the Health Minister, was quoted as announcing this at a news conference.
However, the North American country also announced the re-imposition of testing, and warned about the possibility of the Omicron variant of COVID-19 spreading quickly to challenge hospitals.
Other African countries affected by the announcement are South Africa, Mozambique, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Eswatini, Namibia, Malawi, and Egypt.
Duclos said the lifting of the travel ban would be effective from 11:59 pm on Saturday.
Canada announced the restriction in November “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,” he explained.
The Minister said Pre-arrival negative PCR tests for all travelers would also be reinstated from December 21, as he repeated an earlier government warning that “now is not the time to travel.”
According to officials, laboratory tests have confirmed as of Friday close to 350 cases of the Omicron variant in Canada.
The total average daily Covid case count, meanwhile, has jumped by 45 percent in the past week to about 5,000.
“It is expected the sheer number of (Omicron) cases could inundate the health system in a very short period of time,” said Chief Public Health Officer Theresa Tam.
