South African Omicron Discoverer Laments ‘Knee-Jerk’ Biden-Style Travel Bans
South African Dr. Angelique Coetzee — who discovered a new variant of “Covid-19,” or the Chinese coronavirus, called Omicron last month in her patients — told the Africa News Agency (ANA) on Tuesday she considered the worldwide bans on travel out of southern Africa following Omicron’s emergence “knee-jerk” and short-sighted, given the lack of information about the strain.
“The world, especially England, had a knee-jerk reaction. They stopped everything even after our scientists told them that not enough is known about the variant, whether it is more transmissible or more severe,” Dr. Coetzee, the chairwoman of the South African Medical Association (SAMA), told the ANA on December 7.
Several nations across the globe announced varying degrees of travel restrictions on flights entering their borders from southern Africa in late November after the first cases of Omicron were detected in the region earlier that same month.
Britain, the European Union (E.U.), Japan, and the United States, are among dozens of countries and regional blocs worldwide that have imposed travel bans on flights from countries where Omicron has been detected since mid-November. Those nations include Botswana, South Africa, Eswatini, Lesotho, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Malawi, Zambia, and Angola.
Other states that have restricted travel from southern Africa due to Omicron include Angola, Rwanda, Morocco, Egypt, Israel, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.), Kuwait, Oman, Pakistan, Russia, China, India, Nepal, Canada, Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, the Philippines, Indonesia, Cambodia, Fiji, and the Maldives. – READ MORE
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