Epidemiologists believe Canada’s travel ban approach may not slow down new COVID variant

While there’s much we still don’t know about the Omicron variant of COVID. Canadian epidemiologists say travel bans may not be the solution to stopping the importation of new cases.

“We’re kind of playing whack-a-mole with different airports and it’s not the most effective strategy. We’re likely going to determine in the next week as labs turn on, that there may be circulation locally,” said Dr. Zain Chagla, St. Joseph’s healthcare.

“It may not be the countries that are identified, it may be the countries that are unidentified that are meeting the cases showing up here.”

Canada announced bans on travel to seven sub-Saharan African nations last week, including South Africa, where Omicron was first identified.

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But the first Omicron cases in Canada came from Nigeria – four and a half thousand kilometres away from Johannesburg.

“If you look genomically at what happened, it was actually multiple introductions from Europe and the United States that led to Canada’s first part of the epidemic,” added Chagla.

“We were fortunate to pick up these two cases from Nigeria, given that it was part of a random testing strategy I believe,” said Dr. Kieran Moore, Ontario’s chief medical officer of health.

Ontario’s top doctor says the province and federal government are in talks about more thorough traveller testing. Right now, fully vaccinated Canadians who spend less than 72-hours away can come back without a test – but that could change.

“Maybe a policy towards enhanced testing for travellers, rather than an all-out ‘stop travel from here but you can travel from here’ scenario, is going to be more effective,” added Chagla.

With this, Canada has a unique opportunity. With just two cases identified so far, contact tracing and follow-up testing for those two cases could help identify exactly how transmissible Omicron really is.