Brits take pounding over blame game

As British Prime Minister Boris Johnson continued branding South Africa as the source of the recently-discovered new Covid-19 strain, experts have described him as being unfair.

What has raised the ire of professor Tulio de Oliveira of the KwaZulu-Natal Research Innovation and Sequencing Platform (Krisp) – a University of KwaZulu-Natal science thinktank – is the fact that Johnson and his Health Secretary Matt Hancock have been persistent in attributing the UK Covid-19 surge to the “South African strain”.

Among SA scientists who discovered the new strain, De Oliveira has commented on Twitter: “All of the time that @BorisJohnson and @MattHancock tell the world that they have a more transmittable or deadlier virus, they mention South Africa.

“Why do they keep attacking us?

“We helped them via @WHO [World Health Organisation] evolution group and they could at least say thanks and be less aggressive towards us.”

Backing De Oliveira, Maryam Shahmanesh, associate professor in clinical epidemiology at the University College of London Institute for Global Health and faculty member at the Africa Health Research Institute, said: “We need more leaders like Jacinda Ardem [New Zealand prime minister) and less of the toxic masculinity we see in @BorisJohnson and @MattHancock.

“Toxic masculinity equals no empathy, limited intelligence, over confidence and failure to learn from mistakes.”