Nearly two years into Covid-19, a new variant potentially more dangerous has prompted the world to act fast. But one expert is furious.
An African Union vaccine expert has slammed western countries in a scathing TV interview, criticising the West for banning Africa over the new Omicron variant and calling for a co-ordinated global shutdown.
It comes as Dutch health authorities said they had discovered at least 13 cases of the new strain among passengers on two flights from South Africa and Australia claimed its first two cases.
Dr. Ayoade Olatunbosun-Alakija of the Africa Union’s African Vaccine Delivery Alliance appeared on the BBC on Sunday, claiming the world should have been prepared for a new Covid-19 crisis, calling it “inevitable”.
“Had the first SARS-Covid virus — the one that was first identified in China last year — originated in Africa it is now clear that the world would have locked us away and thrown away the key,” she scathed.
“There would have been no urgency to develop vaccines because it, we would have been expendable, Africa would have become known as the continent of Covid.
“What is going on right now is inevitable, is a result of the world’s failure to vaccinate in an equitable, urgent and speedy manner.”
She criticised countries for immediately introducing travel bans to numerous southern African regions and pleaded to vaccinate Africans urgently.
On Sunday Israel shut its doors to all foreign tourists, the first country to do so due to concerns about the new Covid-19 variant Omicron. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia also halted flights from more African countries including Malawi, Zambia, Madagascar and Angola. On Friday it suspended flights to and from South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Lesotho and Eswatini.
In Australia, under federal measures, travellers entering the country from South Africa, Lesotho, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Namibia, Eswatini, Malawi, and the Seychelles in the last 14 days have been ordered into hotel quarantine.
“Quite frankly, it is unacceptable, these travel bans are based on politics and not in science, it is wrong”.
“Why are the Africans unvaccinated? It’s an outrage,” Dr Olatunbosun-Alakija said.
“We knew we were going to get here. We knew this was a crossroads it was going to bring us to. It was going to bring us to a variant, it was going to bring us to more dangerous variants. “Why are we acting surprised? We are we locking away Africa when this virus is already on three continents?”
“Nobody is locking away Belgium & Israel. Why are we locking away Africa?
“It is wrong and it also time our African leaders stand up and they find their voice. African leadership needs to sit up at this moment, our President needs to wake up at this moment and realise that this is not business as usual.
“The continent is at stake, our lives are at stake and we cannot allow the world to do this to us”.
Dr Olatunbosun-Alakija recommended a “co-ordinated global shutdown of travel for the next month” but she pleaded, “don’t single out Africa”.
Dutch find 13 air passengers with new variant
Dutch health authorities said on Sunday they had discovered at least 13 cases of the new Omicron strain among passengers on two flights from South Africa.
The infections were found after 61 out of 600 travellers on the two KLM planes tested positive for Covid-19 on arrival at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport on Friday.
It was “not unthinkable” that there were further cases of the infectious Omicron variant in the Netherlands, Health Minister Hugo de Jonge said.
“The Omicron variant has so far been identified in 13 of the positive tests. The investigation has not yet been completed. the National Institute for Public Health (RIVM) said in a statement.
“The new variant may be found in more test samples.”
The 61 Covid-positive passengers are almost all in quarantine at a hotel near Schiphol Airport, while a few have been allowed to go into home quarantine.
Passengers who tested negative must also go into isolation at home if remaining in the Netherlands, but others were allowed to continue with their journeys.
“We will control whether they keep to those rules,” de Jonge told reporters.
The Netherlands is now stepping up testing for travellers from South Africa, Botswana, Malawi, Lesotho, Swaziland, Namibia, Mozambique and Zimbabwe, in the region where the new variant was first detected.
“We are making an urgent request to people coming from this area to get tested as soon as possible,” de Jonge said.
Variant detected in more countries, South Africa complains
Fears mounted over the weekend that a highly-infectious new Covid-19 strain was pushing its way into Europe as the world brought the shutters down to contain the new Omicron variant.
Britain confirmed its first two infections and suspected new cases emerged in Germany and the Czech Republic.
South Africa complained it was being “punished” with air travel bans for first detecting the strain, which the World Health Organisation (WHO) has termed a “variant of concern”.
South Korea, Australia and Thailand joined the United States, Brazil, Canada and a host of other countries around the world restricting travel from the region, fearing a major setback to global efforts against the pandemic.
Scientists are racing to determine the threat posed by the heavily mutated strain, which is more transmissible than the dominant Delta variant, and whether it can evade existing vaccines.
Anxious travellers thronged Johannesburg international airport, desperate to squeeze onto the last flights to countries that had imposed sudden travel bans.
Many had cut holidays and rushed back from South African safaris and vineyards.
“It’s ridiculous, we will always be having new variants,” British tourist David Good told AFP. “South Africa found it but it’s probably all over the world already.”
The virus has already slipped through the net with cases in Europe and Hong Kong and Israel.
Both cases in Britain were linked to travel from southern Africa, and in response the government expanded travel restrictions on the region.
Belgium said Friday it had detected the first announced infection in an unvaccinated person returning from abroad.
Germany’s suspect case, meanwhile, was fully jabbed.
“The Omicron variant has with strong likelihood already arrived in Germany,” tweeted Kai Klose, social affairs minister in the western state of Hesse.
The neighbouring Czech Republic was carrying out further tests on a woman who had travelled from Namibia and was suspected to have the new variant, prime minister Andrej Babis said.
The WHO said it could take several weeks to understand the variant, which was initially known as B. 1.1.529, and cautioned against travel curbs while scientific evidence remains scant.
Main countries targeted by shutdown
South Africa called the travel curbs “draconian” and said the flight bans were “akin to punishing South Africa for its advanced genomic sequencing and the ability to detect new variants quicker”.
“Excellent science should be applauded and not punished,” the foreign ministry said in a statement.
The main countries targeted by the shutdown include South Africa, Botswana, Eswatini (Swaziland), Lesotho, Namibia, Zambia, Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe.
US President Joe Biden meanwhile said richer countries should donate more Covid-19 vaccines and give up intellectual property protections to manufacture more doses worldwide.
“The news about this new variant should make clearer than ever why this pandemic will not end until we have global vaccinations,” he said.
But with memories still fresh of the way global air travel helped the spread of Covid after it first emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019, countries clamped down swiftly.
Australia and Belgium became the latest to act, banning all flights from nine southern African countries.
South Korea and Thailand restricted flights from eight countries, as did the United States, Brazil, Canada and Saudi Arabia.
EU officials agreed in an emergency meeting to urge all 27 nations in the bloc to restrict travel from southern Africa, with many members having already done so.
The World Trade Organisation called off its ministerial conference, its biggest gathering in four years, at the last minute Friday due to the new variant.
Vaccine manufacturers have held out hope that they can modify current vaccines to target the Omicron variant.
Germany’s BioNTech and US drugmaker Pfizer said they expect data “in two weeks at the latest” to show if their jab can be adjusted.
Moderna said it will develop a booster specific to the new variant.
Originally published as Omicron: Vaccine expert’s scathing interview as world races to contain new Covid variant
Credit: Source link
