From News Nation:
“US to ban travel from South
Africa, 7 other African nations due to COVID-19 variant”
The White House said Friday the
U.S. will restrict travel from South Africa and seven other countries in the
region beginning Monday due to a new COVID-19 variant. A World Health
Organization panel named the variant “omicron” and classified it as a highly
transmissible virus of concern, the same category that includes the delta
variant, the world’s most prevalent. The panel said early evidence suggests an
increased risk of reinfection.
In response, the United States
joined the European Union and several other countries in instituting travel
restrictions on visitors from southern Africa. The White House did not give
details on the new travel ban except to say the restrictions will not apply to
returning U.S. citizens or permanent residents, who will continue to be
required to test negative before their travel.
Medical experts, including the
WHO, warned against any overreaction before the variant that originated in
southern Africa was better understood. But a jittery world feared the worst
nearly two years after COVID-19 emerged and triggered a pandemic that has
killed more than 5 million people around the globe. “We must move quickly and
at the earliest possible moment,” British Health Secretary Sajid Javid told
lawmakers. There was no immediate indication whether the variant causes a more
severe disease. As with other variants, some infected people display no
symptoms, South African experts said. The WHO panel drew from the Greek
alphabet in naming the variant omicron, as it has done with earlier, major
variants of the virus. Even though some of the genetic changes appear
worrisome, it was unclear if the new variant would pose a significant public
health threat. Some previous variants, like the beta variant, initially concerned
scientists but did not spread very far.
The 27-nation European Union
imposed a temporary ban on air travel from southern Africa, and stocks tumbled
in Asia, Europe and the United States. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped
more than 1,000 points. The S&P 500 index was down 2.3%, on pace for its
worst day since February. The price of oil plunged nearly 12%. “The last thing
we need is to bring in a new variant that will cause even more problems,”
German Health Minister Jens Spahn said. The member nations of the EU have
experienced a massive spike in cases recently. EU Commission President Ursula
von der Leyen said flights will have to “be suspended until we have a clear
understanding about the danger posed by this new variant, and travelers
returning from this region should respect strict quarantine rules.” She insisted
on extreme caution, warning that “mutations could lead to the emergence and
spread of even more concerning variants of the virus that could spread
worldwide within a few months.”
Belgium became the first European
Union country to announce a case of the variant. “It’s a suspicious variant,”
Health Minister Frank Vandenbroucke said. “We don’t know if it’s a very
dangerous variant.” It has yet to be detected in the United States, said Dr.
Anthony Fauci, the U.S. government’s top infectious disease expert. Abroad, the
variant “seems to be spreading at a reasonably rapid rate,” he told CNN. And
although it may be more transmissible and resistant to vaccines than other
variants, “we don’t know that for sure right now.” Showing how complicated the
spread of a variant can be, the Belgian case involved a traveler who returned
to Belgium from Egypt on Nov. 11 but did not become sick with mild symptoms
until Monday, according to professor Marc Van Ranst, who works for the
scientific group overseeing the Belgian government’s COVID-19 response.’
Israel, one of the world’s most
vaccinated countries, announced Friday that it also detected its first case of
the new variant in a traveler who returned from Malawi. The traveler and two
other suspected cases were placed in isolation. Israel said all three were
vaccinated, but officials were looking into the travelers’ exact vaccination
status. After a 10-hour overnight trip, passengers aboard KLM Flight 598 from
Capetown, South Africa, to Amsterdam were held on the edge of the runway Friday
morning at Schiphol airport for four hours pending special testing. Passengers
aboard a flight from Johannesburg were also being isolated and tested. “It’s
ridiculous. If we didn’t catch the dreaded bugger before, we’re catching it
now,” said passenger Francesca de’ Medici, a Rome-based art consultant who was
on the flight. Some experts said the variant’s emergence illustrated how rich
countries’ hoarding of vaccines threatens to prolong the pandemic.
Fewer than 6% of people in Africa
have been fully immunized against COVID-19, and millions of health workers and
vulnerable populations have yet to receive a single dose. Those conditions can
speed up the spread of the virus, offering more opportunities for it to evolve
into a dangerous variant. “This is one of the consequences of the inequity in
vaccine rollouts and why the grabbing of surplus vaccines by richer countries
will inevitably rebound on us all at some point,” said Michael Head, a senior
research fellow in global health at Britain’s University of Southampton. The
new variant added to investor anxiety that months of progress containing
COVID-19 could be reversed “Investors are likely to shoot first and ask
questions later until more is known,” said Jeffrey Halley of foreign exchange
broker Oanda. In a sign of how concerned Wall Street has become, the market’s
so-called fear gauge known as the VIX jumped 48% to a reading of 26.91. That’s
the highest reading for the volatility index since January, before vaccines
were widely distributed. Speaking before the EU announcement, Dr. Michael Ryan,
head of emergencies at the WHO, warned against “knee-jerk responses.” “We’ve
seen in the past, the minute there’s any kind of mention of any kind of
variation and everyone is closing borders and restricting travel,” Ryan said.
“It’s really important that we remain open and stay focused.” The Africa
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention agreed and strongly discouraged any
travel bans on countries that reported the new variant. It said past experience
shows that such travel bans have “not yielded a meaningful outcome.”
Will flight restrictions help
as new virus variant emerges? Yet
the U.S. announced restrictions on visitors from South Africa, Botswana,
Zimbabwe, Namibia, Lesotho, Eswatini, Mozambique, and Malawi, hours after
governments took similar steps. The U.K. banned flights from South
Africa and five other southern African countries at noon on Friday and
announced that anyone who had recently arrived from those countries would be
asked to take a coronavirus test. The Japanese government announced that
Japanese nationals traveling from Eswatini, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Botswana, South
Africa and Lesotho will have to quarantine at government-dedicated
accommodations for 10 days and take COVID-19 tests on the third, sixth and
tenth days. Japan has not yet opened up to foreign nationals. Fauci said
U.S. public health officials were talking Friday with South African colleagues.
“We want to find out scientist to scientist exactly what is going on.” The
WHO’s technical working group says coronavirus infections jumped 11% in the
past week in Europe, the only region in the world where COVID-19 continues to
rise. The WHO’s Europe director, Dr. Hans Kluge, warned that without urgent
measures, the continent could see an additional 700,000 deaths by the spring.
^ it’s better to curb the spread
of this (and any new variant) sooner rather than later. The US and the world
learned that the hard way before so hopefully this will now work. ^
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.