Cairo – Egypt has announced new COVID-19-related restrictions at airports, seaports and land crossings, with the country witnessing a significant surge in daily infections and reporting the highly infectious Omicron as the dominant variant currently.
Starting Saturday (22), Egyptian and foreign travelers to Egypt, except children below the age of 12, will be required to present certificates of COVID-19 vaccination or negative results of PCR tests, acting Health minister Khaled Abdel-Ghaffar said in a statement.
The vaccination certificate must show that the traveler received the single-dose vaccine or the last dose of the two-shot vaccines at least 14 days before arrival, Abdel-Ghaffar noted. Travelers will also have to show they took vaccines approved by the World Health Organization or the Egyptian Drug Authority (EDA).
EDA has granted emergency approval for the coronavirus vaccines of Sinopharm, Sinovac, AstraZeneca, Sputnik V, Moderna, Pfizer, and Johnson & Johnson.
If travelers are not vaccinated, they must present a negative COVID-19 test from among those accredited by the Egyptian Health Ministry, which are PCR test or antigen rapid test or ID Now test. The tests must have been taken within 72 hours before the arrival to the Egyptian entry ports. Children below the age of 12 are not required to do the test.
However, the country will not accept ID NOW COVID-19 tests from travelers coming from South Africa, Botswana, Mozambique, Namibia, Lesotho, Zimbabwe and Eswatini, the minister noted.
Several countries halted travel from these countries in southern Africa, where Omicron was first reported. In December, Egypt’s flag carrier EgyptAir announced resuming flights to Johannesburg, South Africa, only two weeks after they were suspended. Egypt also announced toughening coronavirus measures in November for travelers from the aforementioned countries.
Travelers whose coronavirus tests or vaccine certificates do not conform to the established standards will have to take antigen rapid tests, head of the Preventive Medicine Department of the Health Ministry Amr Qandil said.
In case a traveler tests positive for COVID-19, they would have to self-quarantine at their hotel or residence for five days. On the sixth day, they would undergo a PCR test and will be allowed to end the quarantine in case they test negative and show no symptoms of illness. In the event of testing positive, they will have to quarantine for another five days and leave quarantine on the sixth day without having to take another test.
On Thursday (20) Egypt saw 1,403 new cases and 22 deaths from COVID-19.
Translated by Guilherme Miranda
