AMMAN — Since the first case of
Omicron was
discovered in Jordan, the
Ministry of Health has confirmed the reinstating of
institutional quarantine for certain Omicron patients under specific
circumstances.
اضافة اعلان
According to a local news outlet, the secretary-general
of Epidemiological Affairs at the Health Ministry, Adel Belbisi, has stated
that Jordanian citizens who test positive with Omicron in Jordan, without any
recent travel history, will have their institutional quarantine subsidized by
the government.
However,
Jordanians arriving from the seven
countries affected by the Omicron outbreak (South Africa, Lesotho, Zimbabwe,
Mozambique, Namibia, Eswatini, and Botswana) to the Kingdom will have to be
institutionally quarantined at their own expense.
To contain the spread of Omicron and to allow
health experts to learn more about its workings, it has been decided that
patients who test Omicron positive would be subject to 14-day institutional
quarantine at hotels.
According to former minister of health,
Walid Maani, the idea of self-isolation at home is problematic for several reasons.
Some families might have homes with one bedroom or a shared bathroom, making
social distancing and isolation rather challenging to achieve in certain
households, bearing in mind that virologists have cautioned that Omicron may
spread faster than Delta while yielding similar, if not weaker, symptoms.
Given this information, attested by Anthony Fauci, director of the US Institute of Allergy
and Infectious Diseases, Maani expressed curiosity about “why Jordan does not
enforce an institutional quarantine on the Delta variant now while deciding to
apply the institutional quarantine measures for the less severe Omicron
variant.”
“Perhaps the government will reach a point in
which they will decide to deal with the Omicron variant the same way it did
with the
Delta variant,” meaning that at some point, institutional quarantine
might not be the norm in the future; although it’s too early to tell.
At the moment, according to Maani, there are
possibly only two individuals currently facing institutional quarantine in
Jordan due to the Omicron.
Bassam Hijjawi of the National Epidemiological
Committee confirmed that the committee is undergoing investigations to
determine each of those who have been in contact with local Omicron patients.
During the past two weeks, the
Ministry of Interior has stated that there have been at least 14 arrests made to people who
have been infected with COVID-19, as a result of their violation of home
quarantine procedures.
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