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Ammon News -

A senior health official said Saturday that infections with the new omicron variant that are being discovered inside the Kingdom will be subjected to institutional quarantine at the government's expense.

Advisor at the Prime Ministry for Health Affairs, Adel Balbisi, told the Jordan News Agency (Petra) that the institutional quarantine will be applied to Jordanians coming from 7 African countries, which witnessed the spread of the omicron variant, and at their own expense, regardless of the result of the PCR test at Queen Alia International Airport.

Government decisions ban entry to non-Jordanians from 7 countries, namely South Africa, Lesotho, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Mambia, Eswatini and Botswana, Balbisi noted. He pointed out that in case non-Jordanians from those countries wish to visit the Kingdom, they are required to be in other countries for 14 days, and to bring a negative PCR test, and thee will be retested at the airport.

He said that only confirmed cases of infection with omicron variant will be announced, and no suspected cases of the variant will be announced until they are confirmed.

He added to 36 contacts with the infected case inside Jordan were tested, and they all tested negative, Balbisi announced.

On Thursday, the Health Ministry reported the first two cases of the omicron variant in the Kingdom; the first infection was for a citizen coming from South Africa who was directly quarantined in a hotel in Amman, and the second for a citizen who had no recent travel history outside the Kingdom and was quarantined in a hotel in Amman as well.