The World Health Organization raised concerns over the move of some countries to issue blanket measures against the Omicron COVID-19 variant and could penalize African nations.
“I well understand the concern of all countries to protect their citizens against a variant that we don’t yet fully understand,” said WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
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The Omicron COVID-19 variant was first reported in South Africa and is feared to be more contagious and could lead to immune escape amid the global vaccine roll out.
The WHO said that there are still questions on Omicron variant’s effectiveness on vaccines and severity.
No deaths linked to the new variant have been recorded so far.
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“Once again, I thank Botswana and South Africa for detecting, sequencing, and reporting this variant so rapidly. It is deeply concerning to me that those countries are now being penalized by others for doing the right thing,” Tedros added.
“This travel ban is a knee-jerk reaction grounded in politics, not in science or guidance from the WHO Constitution. We therefore ask why is it that other states that (detected) the variant in persons who have no travel history to southern Africa are exempted from this travel ban,” the WHO said. (TDT)
