Of the list of African countries to which Ecuador prohibited entry through Ómicron, out of five tourists have arrived in the country

On November 29, the government of Guillermo Lasso prohibited the entry of travelers from eight African countries as one of the preventive measures against the variant of the omicron coronavirus that is already in several Latin American countries, including neighboring Peru.

The restriction of entry to Ecuadorian territory includes any person whose point of origin, stopover or transit is South Africa, Botswana, Egypt, Mozambique, Lesotho, Zimbabwe, Eswatini and Namibia, countries detailed by the national Emergency Operations Committee (COE) later of the president’s announcement.

In the migratory flow statistics registered at https://www.migracion.gob.ec/ of the Ministry of Government, there is no record that from January to November 2021 no person from or from Botswana, Lesotho or Eswatini entered Ecuador.

Of the other five countries on the list, 259 originals arrived. 176 people arrived from South Africa and 157 left the country; Of those who entered, 137 declared before migration to come to do tourism. 49 entered through the José Joaquín de Olmedo airport in Guayaquil and 89 through the Mariscal Sucre airport in Quito and 38 through sea ports.

Between January and November 2021, seven Mozambican citizens arrived and six left; three from Namibia arrived and five left the country; from Zimbabwe three and the same number came out. Of these three countries, five of the travelers declared themselves tourists.

One from Mozambique and one from Zimbabwe said upon arrival that they resided in Ecuador.

Last November the entry of eleven citizens of Egypt was registered and in the first eleven months of 2021 there were 70, of them 19 indicated they came for tourism; 40 be residents; two arrived on business; one to an event and eight appear in the other segment.

WHO is confident that vaccines do work against the omicron variant of the coronavirus and expects to have more data in the following weeks

Until Sunday, December 5, 2021, Ecuador had 175 new infections of COVID-19 and accumulated 529,349 positive cases since February 2020 when the first case was officially announced. The case data are recorded in the epidemiological report of the Ministry of Public Health.

The death toll confirmed with COVID-19 remained as the day before, at 23,704 deaths, to which were added 9,780 “probable deaths” as a result of the disease, for a total of 33,484 deaths, notes the news agency Efe.

The spokesman for the World Health Organization (WHO), Christian Lindmeier, maintains that the information suggesting that omicron is highly transmissible are only preliminary data and points out that the travel bans imposed by some countries are unnecessary and only justified in the case of nations whose health systems could not cope with an increase in infections.

“It is preferable to prepare countries and their health systems for possible cases that may arrive, because we can be quite sure that this omicron variant is going to spread,” he declared, according to a UN news publication.