Jordan lifts coronavirus restrictions

Vaccine certificate will still be required to enter businesses and public buildings

Tourists visit the Roman citadel in the Jordanian capital, Amman. Reuters

Jordanian authorities on Thursday scrapped almost all remaining coronavirus restrictions.

Only a requirement for vaccination certificates to enter some buildings remains in force in the country, which ended most of its Covid-19 controls last year.

Infections have risen rapidly in the kingdom in the past three months, with 20 to 30 per cent of PCR tests turning out positive. But the government said the country could live with high infection rates.

Government spokesman Faisal Shboul said a negative PCR test result would no longer be needed to enter Jordan or to attend gatherings such as parties.

He said that as of March 1, the quarantine period for infected people would be reduced from one week to five days.

Vaccination certificates will still be required to enter businesses and public buildings, he said. Only 40 per cent of Jordan’s 10.7 million population has had two doses of a Covid-19 vaccine.

“Keeping these decisions or undoing them will always depend on the pandemic situation,” Mr Shboul said.

He said the authorities would no longer publish daily coronavirus data, instead releasing a weekly report. No reason for this decision was offered.

In June the government lifted most restrictions, such as curfews and bans on gatherings.

It said this was to revive the economy, which officially grew 2 per cent last year compared with a 2 per cent contraction in 2020.

The daily report on Thursday said 23 people had died of Covid-19 in the kingdom in the past 24 hours, and 15,107 people tested positive within the same period.

Jordan’s total coronavirus caseload is 1.75 million, with 13,608 deaths.

Recorded coronavirus infections in Jordan rose by 40 per cent and deaths by 20 per cent since the government said at the end of November that the country had entered a third wave of the pandemic.

Prime Minister Bisher Al Khasawneh said this week that Jordan was in “a transition to habitation with the pandemic and its different variants”.