Initially discovered in Botswana, Omicron has reignited debate over the effectiveness of strict border closures and sparked outrage that South Africa’s transparency in reporting the tribe has led to what the region considers its scapegoat.
South African scientists were the first to identify the variant, which has since been discovered in countries around the world. It has since emerged that Omicron was already present in Europe before the travel bans were announced. It is still unknown where Omicron comes from.
And yet the travel restrictions are entirely focused on southern Africa – including countries that still haven’t found evidence of the new variant. That has sparked a wave of anger among African politicians and public health officials, who are annoyed by the lack of support they have received from the West, which they say now discriminates against countries that are still desperate for vaccine doses.
That list has expanded rapidly since the weekend, despite warnings from researchers that the threat of the new variant is not yet clear. And with it the criticism.
The countries restricting travel include the United States, which blocked entry for travelers from South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Lesotho, Eswatini, Mozambique and Malawi.
“I am deeply concerned that those countries are now being punished by others for doing the right thing. We call on all countries to adopt rational, proportionate risk reduction measures in accordance with international health regulations,” said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in his opening speech at a WHO briefing Wednesday.
Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO technical leader on Covid-19, said travel bans have limited South African researchers’ ability to send virus samples out of the country, “so there are other implications for these travel bans out there. .”
“We don’t want countries to be penalized for sharing information because this is how WHO and our partners, this is how we make assessments and how we give advice,” she said.
Speaking to the United Nations General Assembly for World Tourism in Madrid on Wednesday, South African Tourism Minister Lindiwe Sisulu condemned the bans and called on Spanish officials for making it “impossible” for representatives of South Africa. Africa due to new travel restrictions.
Africa’s anger at the bans spread internationally, while hundreds also expressed their anger on social media.
A stereotype of Africa
“There is no escaping the fear of viruses that exist in Africa,” Remi Adekoya, a political analyst and lecturer at the University of York in England, told DailyExpertNews. “It conjures up all kinds of horrible images in people’s minds about Ebola-like disasters.”
Images of the Ebola virus’ snake-like appearance and images of threatening bats remained deeply ingrained in observers’ consciousness long after the outbreak ended, the report found. When new viruses are found on the continent, it can cause panic.
“When fear, the ‘motivational state,’ changes into actions, individual fear behavior manifests itself at an aggregate level and can spread rapidly and contagiously, in an epidemic fashion, among groups of individuals who share the fear and observe each other’s behavior.”
Adekoya says these fears date back to the 19th-century mythologizing of Africa in movies and news reports.
“‘The dark continent’ still resonates psychologically around the world and therefore every virus or disease that comes out of Africa is instinctively feared,” he said. “If the variant had been discovered elsewhere, the reaction would have been very different.”
Economic damage
Adekoya fears the travel bans could be “completely catastrophic for African economies”. To combat this, he proposes that leaders rise up against their international counterparts.
“Africa must exert maximum diplomatic pressure on Western governments to come up with scientific evidence about what exactly is going on. What is this variant? How deadly is it? And how long should this travel ban apply?”
According to Mara Pillinger, Senior Associate at the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown Law School in Washington, DC, the travel bans have more to do with a lack of political interest in alternatives and less with taking concrete action. to stop the spread of the virus.
“When governments impose travel bans, it’s symbolic — they’re trying to give the impression that they’re taking action to protect their own country,” Pillinger told DailyExpertNews. “But partial measures aren’t effective. It’s like putting a hole in a leaking bucket, but letting the other holes leak.”
The statement that government leaders have made in support of travel bans is that it takes time, she continued. “But we already know what we need: a combination of vaccines, masks, better ventilation, testing and where possible social distancing.”
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said in a speech to the nation on Sunday that he was “deeply disappointed” by what he saw as “completely unwarranted” actions by the West.
“The travel ban has not been informed by science and will not be effective in preventing the spread of this variant,” he said. “All the travel ban will do is further damage the economies of the affected countries and undermine their ability to respond to and also recover from the pandemic.”
During a joint press conference with Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari on Wednesday, Ramaphosa again urged the repeal of the bans.
Vaccine Inequality
A new variant was inevitable as long as parts of the world remain largely unvaccinated, Dr. Ayoade Alakija, co-chair of the African Union Africa Vaccine Delivery Alliance, told DailyExpertNews.
“We have to hold the world to account. They exclude us and mistreat us,” she said. “Africa needs to find a collective voice. Our leaders need to wake up, recognize the geopolitical influence they have and recognize that they can do something right now.”
Only 6% of the more than 8 billion vaccines administered worldwide have been in Africa.
At the start of the pandemic, Africa was praised in some quarters for its relatively low number of cases and deaths, based largely on strong policy responses.
Some critics argue that the continent’s low vaccination rates are the result of vaccine hesitancy, a theory Alakija describes as “bald”. She points out that many countries received small amounts to begin with.
“There’s also a hesitation in the United States about vaccines, but that hasn’t prevented vaccines from being available, so that theory doesn’t make sense,” Alakija said.
The Path Forward
On Monday, Team Europe, a coalition of EU institutions, pledged to donate 500 million doses of the AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer and Moderna vaccines to COVAX to lower-income economies in the fight against Covid-19.
The donor countries are Croatia, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Ireland, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Slovakia and Slovenia.
Meanwhile, US President Joe Biden told the National Institutes of Health on Thursday that the new variant would be fought with “science and speed, not chaos and confusion.”
The way forward for Africa, Adekoya says, “must be an enormous economic enrichment so that it can free itself from this nonsense of being at the mercy of others.”