WHO urges those over 60 to cancel international travel amid Omicron

As the world battles with the new Omicron variant, the World Health Organisation has urged a group of travellers not to leave their country.

People over age 60 or with underlying health conditions should not travel internationally because of Omicron, the World Health Organisation has warned.

The new guidance was issued as part of the WHO’s updated travel advice, which cited “preliminary evidence” that the new Covid-19 variant posed “an increased risk of reinfection”.

The strain, first reported last week by scientists in South Africa, contains a number of mutations not found in the widespread Delta variant of the virus.

The World Health Organisation has urged people over 60 not to travel overseas. Picture: Leon Neal/Getty Images

Scientists fear that those mutations could lead to an increase in breakthrough cases among those immunised against the disease or who have recovered from earlier variants.

Omicron has been reported in at least 17 countries and territories as of Tuesday.

Australia has recorded six cases of the variant – including in a woman in her 30s in NSW.

Countries around the world have started to implement changes to international borders. Picture: Spencer Platt/Getty Images/AFP

In response to the variant, the Federal Government has banned flights from nine southern African countries – including South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Botswana and Mozambique.

In addition, states such as NSW and Victoria have brought back 72 hours of home quarantine for all overseas arrivals into Australia as a measure to limit the introduction of the variant in Australia.

The Tasmanian government has gone one step further, by announcing that anyone who has spent time in any overseas location, except for the South Island of New Zealand, on or since November 28 will not be allowed in the state.

Any traveller intending to travel to Tasmania and who has spent time overseas in the 14 days prior to Sunday, November 28, will need to be approved as an essential traveller.

Essential travellers will need to provide evidence of a negative Covid test in the 72 hours before their arrival.

– With New York Post