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Johannesburg, Nov 27: South Africa on Saturday mentioned it was being “punished” for its superior potential to detect new COVID-19 variants early, as a number of nations imposed journey ban on it because of the new doubtlessly highly-transmissible Omicron variant, first detected right here. The Division of Worldwide Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO) in an announcement urged world leaders to not implement knee-jerk coverage selections in response to the detection of the Omicron variant.
The newest spherical of journey bans is “akin to punishing South Africa for its superior genomic sequencing and the flexibility to detect new variants faster. Wonderful science ought to be applauded and never punished, it mentioned. DIRCO identified that new variants had been detected in different nations as properly and “every of these instances had no latest hyperlinks with Southern Africa”.
Nevertheless, “the response to these nations is starkly totally different to instances in Southern Africa,” it mentioned. DIRCO mentioned its officers are in dialogue with the nations which have banned journey to and from South Africa to dissuade them from persevering with the restrictions.
Overseas minister Naledi Pandor additionally slammed the UK and different nations for his or her transfer to impose journey ban on South Africa. While we respect the best of all nations to take crucial precautionary measures to guard their residents, we have to keep in mind that this pandemic requires collaboration and sharing of experience, she mentioned.
Our rapid concern is the injury that these restrictions are inflicting to households, the journey and tourism industries and companies, Pandor added. Together with South Africa, its neighbouring states — Botswana, Namibia, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Eswatini, Malawi, Zambia and Angola — have additionally been slapped with journey bans, crippling their economies that are largely reliant on tourism.
Earlier, Well being Minister Joe Phaahla has termed the journey bans on South Africa as draconian and misdirected. The brand new COVID-19 variant B.1.1.529, first detected in South Africa this week, was on Friday designated as a Variant of Concern by the World Well being Organisation (WHO), which named it Omicron.
A variant of concern is the WHO’s prime class of worrying COVID-19 variants. International locations world wide are presently racing to introduce journey bans and restrictions on southern African nations in an effort to include Omicron’s unfold.
European nations together with the UK have banned journey to and from South Africa and neighbouring nations of Namibia, Zimbabwe and Botswana, in addition to Lesotho and Eswatini (previously Swaziland), each of that are landlocked inside South Africa. Different nations embody Mauritius, Israel, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, the US, Canada and the Netherlands.
Many different nations adopted swimsuit, most of them indicating that solely their very own residents can be allowed again, topic to a quarantine interval. In New Delhi, the Indian authorities requested all states and union territories to conduct rigorous screening and testing of all worldwide travellers coming from or transiting by way of South Africa, Hong Kong and Botswana, the place the brand new variant has been detected.
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