Canada lifts travel ban from African nations, reimposes testing

The travel restriction on flights from South Africa, Mozambique, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Eswatini, Namibia, Nigeria, Malawi and Egypt will end at 11:59 pm on Saturday (0459 GMT Sunday), Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos told a news conference.

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 would also be reinstated as of December 21, Duclos said, while repeating a government warning earlier this week that "now is not the time to travel."

Officials said laboratory tests have confirmed as of Friday nearly 350 cases of the Omicron variant across 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.

Also on Friday, Ontario and British Columbia provinces reinstated limits on gatherings to 10 people through the Christmas holidays, following Quebec's lead a day earlier.

Restaurants, gyms, shopping malls and other venues must also reduce crowd capacities by 50 percent.

"Nothing will stop the spread of Omicron," Ontario Premier Doug Ford told a news conference. "It's just too transmissible."

"If we don't take every single precaution we can, the modeling tells a scary story," he added, echoing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau who earlier tweeted about "scary" record Covid numbers.