The South African authorities are bitter. The news of the discovery in their country of a new variant of SARS-CoV-2, called Omicron, triggered a worldwide shock wave in twenty-four hours, indefinitely condemning South Africa to the isolation. In a speech to the nation, Sunday, November 28, the president, Cyril Ramaphosa, said to himself “Deeply disappointed” the decision of more than fifteen States to suspend flights from the region or to prohibit the entry of their territory to travelers coming from there.
“These restrictions are unwarranted and unfairly discriminate against our country as well as our sister nations in southern Africa. The travel ban is not scientifically based and will not prevent the spread of this variant. The only consequence is to further damage the economy of the affected countries and undermine their ability to cope with the pandemic ”, said the South African head of state, calling for the lifting of restrictions, contrary to WHO recommendations.
Cyril Ramaphosa also denounced “A clear sprain” to the commitments of the G20, which promised, at the end of October, to stimulate the resumption of international travel and to support the tourism sector, “Especially in developing countries”. Conversely, the announcement of the restrictions caused cascading cancellations of reservations as South African tourism waited for Christmas, the traditional peak of the summer season in southern Africa, to finally bounce back after months in isolation, in due to the discovery of the Beta variant.
The decision is all the more badly lived because it comes to sanction, according to the authorities, the effectiveness and the transparency of the South African researchers. “This latest round of travel bans comes down to punishing South Africa for its advanced genomic sequencing and its ability to detect new variants more quickly. Scientific excellence should be applauded, not punished ”, the international relations department said in a statement on November 27.
Unprecedented speed
South Africans were the first to report worrying mutations of the virus to the WHO, as of December 4, 2020, thus contributing to the identification of the Alpha variant in the United Kingdom. Since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, their work has been regularly cited in prestigious scientific journals. South African Department of Health Director General Nicholas Crisp now fears sanctions “Make countries where there is scientific capacity less inclined to communicate their findings”.
You have 44.14% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.