South Africa, whose inhabitants have become “unwanted people” around the world after authorities said they had identified a worrying variant of the new coronavirus, feels “punished” and treated unfairly because its scientists signaled the global consensus. .
The government denounced the stigmatization of the “messenger of bad news”, as did many internet users, worried and outraged by the developments.
The travel bans are tantamount to “punishing South Africa for its advanced genome sequencing capabilities and ability to detect new variants more quickly,” the government said today, two days after the announcement of the Omicron variant.
“Scientific excellence should be applauded, not punished,” he said.
“New variations are being found in other countries as well. None of this has anything to do with South Africa. “It should be noted that the reactions to these countries are radically different from those reserved for the countries of South Africa,” the foreign ministry said in a statement.
The World Health Organization recommended not to apply travel restrictions due to the new variant, but was not heeded.
The Minister of Health of South Africa, since last night, denounced the “draconian” reactions and the “panic” of many countries that immediately closed their borders, without even knowing how dangerous Omicron is. “Some leaders are looking for scapegoats for a global problem,” said Joe Faala.
Pretoria is concerned about the impact of the restrictive measures “on families, the tourism sector, businesses”. At the same time, however, they may push other countries not to announce the identification of new variants, for fear that they will be “punished”.
“Sometimes we are punished for being transparent and doing things fast,” said virologist Tulio de Oliveira, whose team discovered the new variant. The Brazilian researcher, who lives permanently in South Africa, pointed out that travel bans “do not make sense from a scientific point of view” to fight Covid-19. He recalled that the US had imposed such a ban on China at the beginning of the pandemic, but then found themselves recording the highest number of cases in the world.
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