The measure was announced this Saturday by the minister of State and head of the Civil House of the President of the Republic, Adão de Almeida, according to which the entry of citizens from these countries is temporarily suspended, by any means, from 1 December.
The measure does not cover national citizens who may eventually return, although air connections will be suspended from that date, added the minister, indicating that it will be necessary to observe a 14-day home quarantine.
From 1 January 2022, flights from India on which there is currently a ban will also be allowed to resume.
Several countries, including Portugal, have already applied flight restrictions with several African countries after being detected the new variant of the coronavirus, Ómicron, in South Africa, which according to the World Health Organization (WHO) may imply greater infectivity due to "a high number of mutations".
The European Center for Disease Control (ECDC) warned on Thursday that the new strain of the SARS-CoV-2 virus raises "serious concerns that it could significantly reduce the effectiveness of vaccines and increase the risk of reinfections."
In a statement on the threat assessment of the new variant, and based on genetic information currently available, ECDC said the new variant detected in southern Africa is the most divergent (from the original virus) detected to date.
Covid-19 has caused at least 5,180,276 deaths worldwide, among more than 259.46 million infections by the new coronavirus registered since the beginning of the pandemic, according to the most recent report by the Agence France-Presse.
The disease is caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, detected in late 2019 in Wuhan, a city in central China.
