“We call to reverse their decisions”: the request of the president of South Africa for the omicron variant

The president of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa, on Sunday urged all the countries that imposed travel restrictions to southern Africa for the detection of the omicron variant a “Urgently reverse their decisions” because they don’t have “Scientific justification”.

“We call on those countries that imposed travel bans on our country and on our sister countries in southern Africa to urgently reverse their decisions and lift the bans they imposed before further damage is done to our economies.”, Ramaphosa pointed out in his first speech to the Nation after the identification of this new variant of the coronavirus.

For the president, the restrictions are “Unjustified” and “They discriminate unfairly” to the southern African nations, in addition to “They will not be effective in preventing the expansion of this variant”.

“Instead of banning travel, the world’s rich countries should support the efforts of developing economies to access and manufacture sufficient doses of vaccines for their people without delay.”stressed the South African President.

“The emergence of the omicron variant should be a wake-up call for the world that the inequality of the vaccine cannot continue”Ramaphosa added.

The head of state also indicated that the South African government decided not to impose new national restrictions for now, but stressed that, given the increase in cases in recent days, this can only be maintained if the level of vaccination increases (around 24%).

In that sense, Ramaphosa announced that the country will intensify the inoculation against the COVID-19 and the process for entering booster doses will begin.

It will also study making it mandatory for “Specific activities and places”.

“We are aware that the introduction of such measures is a difficult and complex issue, but if we do not address this seriously and urgently, we will continue to be vulnerable to new variants and we will continue to suffer from new waves of infections”, argument.

The discovery of this new variant of the coronavirus, identified as B.1.1.529 and baptized with the Greek letter omicron by the World Health Organization (WHO), it was announced last Thursday by scientists and health authorities in South Africa, based on samples taken between November 14 and 16.

At the same time, the 4 initial infections from Botswana and one in Hong Kong (China), from a traveler from South Africa.

Since Friday, other countries also confirmed cases of the omicron variant such as Israel, Belgium (a case of a traveler from Egypt with no apparent ties to South Africa), Australia, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and elsewhere.

The new variant – of which, however, there are still very few confirmed cases in total – is characterized by an unusually high number of mutations, the impact of which has yet to be studied.

The WHO, when qualifying it this Friday as a risk variant, recognized, however, that some of these new mutations seem to suggest an even greater transmission capacity than the previous variants.

Despite the limited information available (due to early detection), many countries, including the United Kingdom, the United States and the nations of the European Union, quickly announced drastic travel restrictions for the countries of southern Africa, measures that generated a strong unrest on the African continent.

South Africa remains the epicenter of the pandemic for Africa, with 2.9 million accumulated cases and almost 90,000 deaths.