Two people in the Canadian capital city of Ottawa have tested positive for the highly transmissible Omicron variant of COVID-19, according to the Ontario provincial government.

The two people recently travelled to Nigeria.

"The Ontario COVID-19 Genomic Network is continuing to actively monitor for all potential variants circulating in the province, including the Omicron variant, and is conducting genomic sequencing on 100 per cent of eligible COVID-19 positive samples."

On Friday, several countries, including Canada, announced travel restrictions for southern African countries.

Canadian Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos said in a statement that he has spoken with his provincial counterpart about the new cases.

"This development demonstrates that our monitoring system is working," he added.

"As the monitoring and testing continue with provinces and territories, it is expected that other cases of this variant will be found in Canada."

(This story was published from a syndicated feed. Only the headline and picture has been edited by FIT)