New Delhi: South Africa said in a statement on Saturday that the country was being “punished” by the World Health Organization on Friday for detecting the Omicron version of the coronavirus, which is classified as a “type of concern”.
Soon after South Africa alerted the WHO about the new version, several countries imposed travel restrictions on flights to several African countries in an effort to stave off the virus. However, the travel restrictions are going to hurt the tourism industry and businesses in South Africa, the foreign ministry said.
The statement issued by the ministry said imposing the travel ban “is tantamount to punishing South Africa for its advanced genomic sequencing and ability to detect new variants early.”
“Excellent science should be appreciated and not punished,” the statement said. The variant was detected on Thursday, and later more cases were found in Israel, Belgium, Hong Kong, Botswana and the UK. As a result, countries announced travel restrictions on several African countries.
It further said that despite cases being found in other countries, the response to South Africa is different. “Each of those cases has no recent association with Southern Africa, but the response of those countries is quite different from the cases in Southern Africa,” the statement said.
The variant was declared a “type of concern” and designated as Omicron by the WHO on Friday, saying the virus could be highly transmitted, and it took weeks to study its effect on the vaccine’s efficacy. may take. More travel restrictions were imposed after the WHO statement.
The South African government’s statement stressed that their “ability to test and its ramp-up vaccination programme, supported by a world-class scientific community, should give our global partners the comfort we are doing as well as They are also doing well in managing the pandemic.”
On concerns about economic damage to the country from the travel restrictions, South African Foreign Minister Nledi Pandor said, “Our immediate concern is that these restrictions are hurting families, the travel and tourism industries and business.”
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