New Delhi: In view of the resurgence of new Covid-19 infections in recent weeks, Saudi Arabia has announced travel restrictions for its citizens. The country has banned its people from travelling to India along with 15 other countries.
The countries that Saudi Arabia has asked its citizens to avoid travelling to are India, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Libya, Indonesia, Vietnam, Armenia, Belarus, and Venezuela.
The travel ban was notified by the Saudi government’s Directorate General of Passports on Saturday. At present, the restrictions apply to the citizens of Saudi Arabia who wish to travel to the abovementioned countries.
However, no new norms have been issued on whether Indian nationals will be barred from entering the gulf country or not.
The health ministry of Saudi Arabia also assured that the country has not reported any cases of monkeypox yet. “Until now, cases of transmission between humans are very limited, and therefore the possibility of any outbreaks occurring from it, even in countries that have detected cases, are very low,” said Abdullah Asiri, Deputy Minister of Health for preventive health.
Meanwhile, the World Health Organisation (WHO) recently said that the Covid-19 pandemic is “most certainly not over”. Though there’s been a decline in reported
cases since the omicron wave, the pandemic is not yet gone. WHO’s director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said, “We lower our guard at our peril.”
He said that “declining testing and sequencing means we are blinding ourselves to the evolution of the virus.” Almost 1 billion people in lower-income countries are not yet vaccinated, according to Ghebreyesus.