Two days after news of Omicron’s existence was announced, after it was also discovered in Hong Kong and Botswana, the UK issued a travel ban all foreign visitors from South Africa and some neighboring countries with more than 20 countries, including the United States, the latter conforms to some form. This is like a slap on the wrist in South Africa – and one that will likely hurt South Africans while providing little protection from Omicron for the rest of the world. South Africa should not be punished for quickly identifying the variant and informing the world of its presence. Promises made by heads of state in G20 Summit in October to collaborate on rebuilding the world’s travel industry seems to have been ignored – and these travel restrictions are a misguided result.
To date, South Africa has identified two worrisome variants. This is thanks to advanced genome monitoring system was established in May 2020, created to provide a quick sequence of understanding virus behavior and ultimately policy notice. Immediately after the travel ban was implemented by many countries, variant has been identified in Japan, Brazil, many European countries and on Wednesday it was identified in the US.
However, it is South Africa and surrounding countries are being particularly severely affected by travel restrictions. This begs the question, if Omicron cases first appeared in a North American or Western European country, would similar travel bans be implemented? Or is South Africa’s geography and relatively low GDP making it a target of these restrictions, despite the service we’ve provided to the world by issuing the earliest possible warning about climate change. this new body?
The travel bans and restrictions first used to prevent the spread of Covid-19 have largely been unsuccessful, except in island nations such as Australia and New Zealand, closed their borders to the rest of the world during the early stages of the pandemic. Overall, the world realizes that it is not possible to stop the spread of the virus.
As the pandemic rages and coronavirus variants emerge, travel restrictions have been imposed in an attempt to delay or control their import from one country to another. This is often too late, as variants are only defined after scattering happened.
While delaying the spread of variants may give countries a little more time to better prepare their health care systems, travel restrictions take a toll on health. economy, especially for countries heavily dependent on tourism income. As it stands, almost two years after the pandemic, high-income countries have much in common public health resources in place to fight Covid-19, as well as vaccines are available. The benefits of mitigating the spread of Omicron in these countries through a travel ban do not outweigh the economic costs to South Africa and other banned countries.
Many of the economies of the low-middle-income countries of the Global South rely heavily on December tourism from the UK, Europe and the US. Just before the pandemic hit, tourists spent Rs 116.9 billion (about $7.34 billion in US dollars) in a year, according to the South Africa Tourism Annual Report. And, as Tshifhiwa Tshivhengwa, CEO of the South African Tourism Business Council, tells us, preliminary indications are that more than R1 billion bookings have been canceled since the UK announced the Travel restrictions. This is just the surface of the economic impact and does not include money that travelers have spent at restaurants, gift shops, or on transportation and other daily expenses.
Decisions about global travel and Covid safety need to be informed by reliable data. We, as a world, need to find solutions that work, instead of relying on last year’s solution that we know won’t. When President Joe Biden and others say the travel ban is necessary to buy US time To better understand this variation, they are unaware of the impact such unscientific actions have on the livelihoods of millions of people in the affected countries. All these travel bans will push these countries into further economic turmoil.
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