South Sudan President Salva Kiir halted a planned visit to Qatar after members of his advanced team tested positive for Covid-19 on arrival in the capital, Doha on Monday.

The presidential advanced team comprised his Kiir’s security adviser, Tut Gatluak Manime, Foreign Affairs minister, Mayiik Ayii Deng, Investment minister, Dhieu Mathok Wol, Higher Education minister, Gabriel Changson Chang, Wildlife, Tourism and Forestry minister, Rizik Zachariah Hassan and the Managing Director of the state-owned oil company (Nilepet), Chol Deng Thon Abel.

The presidency, in a statement issued prior to the delegation’s visit to Doha, said the South Sudanese leader and his team would discuss “a wide range of issues including continued cooperation between the two countries and to start engagement on a shared regional security interest, shared institutional values, and solicit views of the officials on the Sudanese and Ethiopian political crisis”.

This would have been Kiir’s first visit to Qatar since South Sudan’s independence in 2011.

A member of the delegation said they are confined to a hotel in Doha, with limited movement and interaction with officials from the host country.

“Some of our members tested positive of covid19 on arrival. We are now in a hotel. We cannot move. We are just here in the hotel. This situation has resulted in the rescheduling of the visit of his excellency the president of the Republic of South Sudan, General Salva Kiir Mayardit. We were coming to prepare the ground, especially the agendas”, he told Sudan Tribune on Tuesday.

The failure to perform a test on senior government officials travelling out of the country has sparked a social media discourse, with some questioning reliability of testing machines in the country and whether authorities comply with the standard operating procedures to be observed when travelling and entering any country in the wake of the measures imposed to control the pandemic.

Many claimed some senior government officials do not comply with the requirements.

Last year, the country’s chief justice, Chan Reec Madut declined to take a Covid-19 test on arrival at Juba International Airport from a foreign trip, causing squabble between the health officials and members of the security services.