New travel restrictions prove that yet again, racism moves faster than science in the world’s response to the pandemic.
The omicron variant of COVID-19 was first identified in Botswana. The highly contagious but apparently mild form of the coronavirus has since been detected all over the world, but scientists are clear that they do not know where the variant originated. It has been found in Europe, the U.S., Russia, and Australia. The European infections in particular are known to have come before the variant was identified in Botswana.
Despite this, the new wave of travel restrictions from countries like the United States, Japan, and the entire European Union have squarely target southern African nations. They’ve even included countries which have not yet found any infections of omicron.
“We are all concerned about the new Covid variant and owe South Africa’s scientists our thanks for identifying it before anyone else did,” Malawi’s President Lazarus Chakwera said in a Facebook post on December 3rd. “But the unilateral travel bans now imposed on [Southern African Development Community] countries by the UK, EU, US, Australia, and others are uncalled for. Covid measures must be based on science, not Afrophobia.”
Malawi is among the countries which have found no evidence of omicron.
“It’s deeply concerning to me that those countries are now being penalized by others for doing the right thing. We call on all countries to take rational, proportional risk reduction measures in keeping with international health regulations,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a WHO briefing Wednesday.
For instance, the travel bans have excluded delegates for these countries from attending the United Nations World Tourism General Assembly in Madrid, which will have economic repercussions for those countries.
African officials have also asserted that the travel bans have curtailed vaccine donations, particularly from the U.S. The countries of southern African need these badly.
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