Federal health minister warns international travellers about Omicron

As international flights resume out of Regina and Saskatoon, Canada’s health minister is issuing a warning to people who want to head overseas.

During a media conference Friday, Jean-Yves Duclos said the new Omicron variant of COVID-19 should be a major concern for anyone thinking of hopping on a plane.

“The community transmission of Omicron (in Canada) now is limited and therefore it’s not, domestically speaking, what people should think about when they plan their holiday opportunities with friends and families,” Duclos said during a media conference.

“However, if they think about travelling outside of Canada, Omicron should be a big red part of their radar screen. It should be flashing.”

The new variant recently was detected in countries in southern Africa, prompting a number of other nations to put travel restrictions on people who have travelled to 10 countries in that region.

Given those restrictions, Duclos warned Canadians that returning to the country will lead to delays and hassles.

So far, 87 cases of the new strain have been detected in Canada, with four of those in Saskatchewan.

During the media conference, Dr. Theresa Tam — Canada’s chief public health officer — presented modelling data related to Omicron.

If the Delta variant remains the dominant strain, Tam said Canada could see up to 15,000 COVID cases per day by mid-January. But if Omicron becomes the main variant and it proves to be three times more transmissible than Delta, Canada could see 26,600 daily cases by mid-January.

Tam urged Canadians to be careful over the Christmas holidays with cases of the new variant on the rise.

“Why we’re asking for caution is that when that curve takes off — and it can take off very rapidly, as you’ve seen in the United Kingdom — even lower-severity impacts can result in a large number of people ending up in the hospital,” Tam said. “We just want to keep things smoothed out and manageable.”

— With files from The Canadian Press