It was nothing new. But that didn’t stop causing indignation. The world response to the discovery of the omicron variant of the coronavirus, led by South African scientists, was received by African countries like a bucket of cold water: about to minimally resume their economies after two pandemic years, many of them saw the borders of the world if close.
In the first hours after the announcement of the sequencing of the omicron, scientists asked that the answer be consistent with scientific knowledge. “I hope it’s time to take a global approach to a global pandemic and end nationalism; it’s not the nations’ fault if the viruses evolve,” tweeted Brazilian Túlio de Oliveira, one of those responsible for identifying the variant.
What was observed from then onwards, with several nations closing their borders to countries in southern Africa, however, highlighted global discrimination in relation to the continent. And what showed the prejudice was the ban on the entry of travelers from southern African nations that had not even identified cases of omicron yet, says Carlos Lopes, a professor at the University of Cape Town.
“It has a little to do with this idea that Africa is one and the same, or that a part of the continent is homogeneous, an easy association that is made of African geography”, he explains. “It reminded me of Ebola, which was mostly affecting three countries [Guiné, Libéria e Serra Leoa], but it was talked about as if it were all over Africa.”
An example of the argument is the case of Mozambique. The Portuguese-speaking country confirmed the first two cases of omicron only on Tuesday (30), but, days before, there were already restrictions against its travelers on the borders of countries like the USA, Canada, Australia, France, Portugal, Italy and Germany.
The scenario is “clearly discriminatory”, says the deputy director general of the National Institute of Health of Mozambique, Eduardo Samo Gudo. “I often say that the worst pandemic is not the disease, but selfishness, nationalism and lack of collaboration at the global level.”
He says that the epidemiological situation in Mozambique is favorable — the country is in the first level on a national scale of five alert categories, where 1 means less transmission and 5 means greater.
With the end of the high season in contagions related to acute respiratory diseases, the weekly rate of positivity of the samples tested is around 0.5% — a ratio that, just a few months ago, was 50%.
Although there is an influence of some level of underreporting in the low index, Samo Gudo says that the rate would remain proportional, even if the pace of testing were increased. According to him, the availability of tests, once a problem, is now sufficient. The same cannot be said of vaccines: the country has just over 11% of the population with a complete vaccination schedule, according to Our World in Data, a portal linked to the University of Oxford.
“There is a lack of vaccines, but the acceptance of the population is great. If Mozambique had full access to immunization agents, I am sure that at that time we would have a very high vaccination coverage.”
The Mozambican scientist also criticizes the effectiveness of closing borders: “It is neither rational nor based on scientific evidence. Each country is sovereign to make its own decisions, but, as a scientist, I look at it as a throwback to medieval times.”
Augusto Paulo Silva, a researcher for African countries at Fiocruz’s Center for International Relations in Health, makes a similar point. He explains that the containment of omicron, which has already been identified in more than 20 countries, should be carried out through epidemiological surveillance, isolation of those infected and mass vaccination.
“Fiocruz joined the voices that were indignant against the measures that we believe are a punishment for South Africa and for neighboring countries for having shared scientific information”, he says. “It is apartheid that is getting back on its feet because of the pandemic.”
Professor of anthropology at the University of North-West (South Africa), Jess Auerbach says that the global response to the omicron was permeated with elements of racism. “The prejudice that is in the imagination and that reaches state levels is an issue that needs to be thought about”, he says.
She reports that the ban led to the dismay of South Africans, especially those in Cape Town, the capital whose economy is essentially based on tourism, which was about to be revived.
In an article published in the journal African Arguments, the anthropologist claims that the observed scenario may discourage global transparency in relation to the pandemic. “We’re not surprised if next time a country says nothing for fear of being blamed for the logical results of a global failure to protect the planet’s population.”
Racism is also the word used by activist Fatima Hassan, founder of the Health Justice Initiative, to describe the impacts imposed by the global community on Africa. The project he leads was created in South Africa in July last year to, among other things, advocate for the breaking of patents on vaccines.
She says that the arrival of omicron could have been a window of opportunity for countries to organize another type of response for Africa — different, for example, from the one given when they concentrated doses of vaccine and did not share access to technology. “But the way the world responded to that showed that there really is no global solidarity.”
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