Manama : An updated travel policy that exempted fully vaccinated passengers from mandatory quarantines in Qatar goes into effect Monday, July 12.
Citizens, residents and visitors who are vaccinated or not will need to conduct a PCR test at an accredited health centre 72 hours prior to their travel to Qatar.
The new rules also classify countries into three categories - green, yellow and red- according to the covid cases. A quarantine policy for each category will be applied to unvaccinated travellers arriving in Qatar. This procedure also applies to travellers who are inoculated with vaccines not recognised in Qatar or who fall short of the 14 days vaccine administration period since the second dose.
Travellers coming from the green category will have to undergo domestic quarantine for five days. They need to take a RT-PCR test in PHCC on the fourth day of their quarantine.
Arrivals from the yellow category will undergo hotel quarantine for seven days. They will have to take a RT-PCR test at their expense on the sixth day.
For travellers coming from the red category will have to stay 10 days in hotel quarantine and a PCR test at their expense on the seventh day.
Vaccinated travellers coming from Red group countries will undergo a RT-PCR test at traveller’s expense on arrival at Doha airport. 94 countries, including India, are on the red list.
Children from 0-11 years old will follow the same entry rules of their parents. If the latter are vaccinated, the children will be considered as vaccinated. Unvaccinated children from 12-17 years old will be required to do quarantine as for the procedure assigned to the country of departure. In case of hotel quarantine, they will be accompanied by one parent, even if the latter is vaccinated.
All passengers coming to Qatar will also have to pre-register on the “Ehteraz” website and attach all the required documents no less than 12 hours before arrival, the Ministry of Public Health said.
The new travel policy is part of the gradual lifting of Covid-19 restrictions in the country.
There are four vaccines that are approved by the government of Canada at the moment; namely, Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson. It also approved Sinopharm as a conditional vaccine.
Recipients of the conditional vaccine will have antibody testing at Doha airport. If there is no antibody in the test, he / she should be quarantined.
Fully vaccinated is defined as the traveller has received the full series of a vaccine. This is usually two doses unless the traveller took the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
Meanwhile, the Qatari will resume the issuance of tourist and family entry visas from Thursday, the ministry of interior said.
