The Justin Trudeau government today will announce tougher testing rules and other travel restrictions.
The Canadian Prime Minister spoke with provincial premiers on Tuesday night, and multiple sources report that tougher rules are coming to help battle the Omicron variant of COVID-19.
The Toronto Star says tougher rules “include requiring Canadians who do travel abroad to once again produce negative PCR tests upon return, even for short trips outside the country of 72 hours or less — a condition that was briefly lifted before the onset of the omicron variant.”
CTV News reports that the government also will begin requiring on-arrival tests from travellers coming into Canada from the U.S., which would be a strong deterrent to out-of-country travel. The Canadian government recently ruled that incoming travellers from all countries other than the U.S. have to be tested upon arrival, and isolate while awaiting test results. Those results can take up to three days, officials said.
Reports state that Trudeau will renew a government advisory against all non-essential international travel, a suggestion that was in place for a year and-a-half before being quietly lifted in October of this year.
The CBC today quotes sources as saying that “much stronger measures were discussed” by Trudeau and premiers on Tuesday but that no decision was reached. Those measures include “whether to implement a ban on all non-essential foreign travellers into Canada, including from the United States, and stricter quarantine and testing measures for travellers who are allowed into Canada, including returning Canadians and permanent residents.”
In a related story, the CBC says medical experts studying the coronavirus said Canadians should be “ready to pivot” and change their travel plans this holiday season, even within Canada.
“If [you] can avoid travel, avoid it,” said Dr. Peter Juni, the head of Ontario’s COVID-19 Science Advisory Table. “We just need to really seriously cut down on our contact.”
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Absolutely disgusting. People have international families, who choose not to get vaccinated because people are dying all around who have been vaccinated. Lift your border restrictions because they serve no true purpose