South Africa is complaining that it is being punished – instead of applauded – for discovering Omicron, a worrying new variant of Covid-19.
The Department of Foreign Affairs made the statement as countries around the world restricted travel from South Africa as details of the disease’s spread emerged.
Early data suggest that the Omicron variant has a higher risk of reinfection.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said Friday that the new variant was “of concern.”
Several cases have now been identified in Europe – two in the United Kingdom, two in Germany, one in Belgium and another in Italy, while a suspected case has been found in the Czech Republic.
Israel, where the new variant has been confirmed, has decided to ban all foreigners from entering the country as of midnight Sunday.
Cases of Omicron have also been detected in Botswana, Hong Kong and Israel.
Hundreds of passengers arriving in the Netherlands from South Africa have been tested for the new variant.
Some 61 people on two KLM flights tested positive for Covid-19 and were quarantined in a hotel near Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport pending further testing, Dutch authorities said.
The Netherlands is currently experiencing a record increase in the number of cases. An extended partial lockdown there goes into effect Sunday night.
“Scientific excellence should be applauded, not punished”
The bans amount to “punishing South Africa for its advanced genomic sequencing and ability to detect new variants more quickly.”
The statement added that the reaction has been completely different when new variants have been discovered elsewhere in the world.
An African Union official told the BBC that developed countries were to blame for the emergence of the variant.
“What is happening now is inevitable, it is the result of the world’s failure to vaccinate fairly, urgently and quickly. It is the result of hoarding [of vaccines] by the world’s high-income countries, and frankly, it is unacceptable,” said Ayoade Alakija, co-chair of the AU Vaccine Delivery Alliance.
She said that “the first known confirmed infection with B.1.1.529 was from a specimen collected on November 9.”
“Patients are complaining mostly of body aches and fatigue, extreme fatigue, and we’re seeing this in younger generations, not older people…. We’re not talking about patients who might go straight to the hospital and be admitted,” said Dr. Angelique Coetzee.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of infectious diseases in the United States, said that while reports of the new variant raise a “red flag,” it is possible that vaccines are still effective in preventing serious illness.
Is border closure effective against the Omicron variant?
The WHO has warned countries against imposing travel restrictions hastily, saying they should take a “scientific and risk-based approach”.
The new variant has authorities worried, prompting several countries to announce border closures. However, its characteristics are still unknown.
It is a race between Homo sapiens and a virus as we have never seen,” summarizes Hervé Fleury, virologist and professor emeritus at the CNRS and the University of Bordeaux. After the variants Alpha, Beta, Gama, Delta … Here is the Omicron variant, with a record number of 32 mutations in its Spike protein. Two years after the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, it seems that the virus continues its progression and its mutations, making difficult the fight against the health crisis.
The Omicron variant has already been detected in many countries around the world, and particularly in Europe where Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, the United Kingdom, Italy and the Czech Republic have announced the presence of cases on their soil. This Sunday, the Minister of Health Olivier Véran has in turn estimated that cases could be in France. “To date, there has not yet been any identification of this type of variant on the national territory, but it is very likely a matter of hours,” said the minister after a visit to a vaccination center in Paris.
This is a cause for concern, a few weeks before the end of the year holidays and while a fifth wave is sweeping across Europe, and therefore France. However, the strategy to fight the epidemic will not be revised because, for the Minister, this detection “does not impact the profile of the epidemic wave that we know. It is a wave that is already linked to a very contagious variant, the Delta variant”.
