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Ammon News - The government is set to announce 15 new measures under Defence Order No. 35, which will come into force at the start of the new year as efforts are stepped up to contain fast-spreading coronavirus variants, the last of which is Covid-19 Omicron, according to sources.

The enforcement of the defence order comes out of the government’s keenness not to slip back in the fight to curb the pandemic's spread, protect public health and safety and avoid disruptions "at a time when world nations are tightening measures to combat the virus, which took more than 5 million lives, while accelerating vaccinations," they said.

Latest Health Ministry figures indicate the seriousness of the spread of the virus and its impact on citizens' health, with 1,050,257 infections and 12,403 deaths recorded since the pandemic struck until yesterday.

Under the new government measures, a civil servant or a private sector employee cannot join the workplace unless they were double-jabbed and that the days they were absent from work will be deducted from their annual leaves. Anyone over 18 will be denied access to ministries and official institutions or any private sector facility unless they took the two vaccine shots, excluding emergencies in hospitals and health centres, according to the sources.

Facilities violating the order, including shopping malls, banks, restaurants and bakeries, hotels, bars, sports clubs, among others, face a fine of JD1,000 for the first violation, JD3,000 for the second, JD5,000 for the third and a one-week closure for the fifth, they said.

Defense Order No. 35 and the relevant measures that will be enforced are to prevent the spread of the pandemic and the fall of new victims and avoiding more pressure on the health system and a return to debilitating lockdowns, Professor of Law at the Jordan Media Institute, Sakhr Khasawneh, told Petra in an interview.

"The entire world has begun tightening procedures, including vaccination and negative PCR testing 72 hours before entry to public facilities and major events, to strike a balance between the continuation of economic and social life and the protection of the humans and their health with the available scientific medical measures away from ignorance, myth and conspiracy theories," he pointed out.

Also interviewed by Petra, adviser on infectious diseases and member of the National Committee for Covid-19 Vaccines, Professor Dirar Balawi, said that the vaccination rate in Jordan remained at 37 per cent of the Kingdom's population, and "this is a cause for worry due to the variants that increase the spread of the virus and put pressure on the local health system and the community's health at risk."

Those who were double vaccinated are worthy of protection, rather than those who did not take the vaccine, who are a major transmitter and cause of infection, he pointed out.

(Petra)