Australia's most populous state was urgently testing people entering the country, after two arrivals from southern Africa tested positive for Covid-19, as some countries have detected the new Omicron variant.

Australia imposed new restrictions on Saturday on people who have been to nine southern African countries, as the highly infectious Omicron variant raises concerns about another wave of the pandemic, according to Reuters.

Britain, Germany and Italy detected Omicron cases on Saturday as more nations imposed restrictions on travel from southern Africa.

“Urgent genomic sequencing is underway to determine if they have been infected by the new Omicron [...] variant of concern,” the health department of New South Wales said in a release.