South Africa: Punished for identifying Omicron
After brilliant South African scientists identified an alarming new Covid variant last week, a grateful world should have thanked this nation, said Robin Adams in the Cape Argus. Instead, it treated us like a pariah. In a matter of hours, the U.K. halted all flights to and from South Africa and its neighbors, and the U.S. and other nations soon followed. The ban “left travelers, local and foreign, stranded at South Africa’s main airports.” Omicron, as the B.1.1.529 variant has been named, has more than 30 mutations on its spike protein—the target of most vaccines and the key it uses to enter human cells. The variant is spreading rapidly in South Africa, but it’s unclear if it originated here; Dutch scientists have found there were cases in Europe before the South African announcement. The flight bans are a catastrophe for our country’s tourism industry, which is still reeling from last year’s losses and was just about to enter “peak summer holiday period” for the Southern Hemisphere.
“It’s so unfair,” said Jennie Ridyard in The Citizen. South Africa was removed from the U.K.’s Covid “red list” of countries only two months ago, and we’ve now fallen victim to Western prejudice once again. “Dirty, dirty, dirty!” the world shouts. “Batten down your hatches, lock your borders, because those naughty South Africans are at it again mutating.” Never mind that Omicron has already popped up in multiple countries, including Israel, Belgium, and China, so rejecting only travelers from southern Africa achieves nothing. It’s especially “ironic” that the
British would lead the way in adopting a measure scientists say is of dubious efficacy, said Business Day in an editorial, when their country has been one of the worst at following World Health Organization recommendations. Prime Minister Boris Johnson “thinks it is fine to go to hospitals or theaters without a mask,” even though Covid cases in his country have been soaring since summer, long before Omicron. Some glum South Africans are starting to mutter that our scientists should keep their discoveries to themselves if publicizing them “exposes the country to stigma.”
What the world should do is vaccinate South Africans, said
Mark Heywood in DailyMaverick.co.za. This is “one of the most unhealthy societies in the world,” grappling simultaneously with epidemics of HIV and tuberculosis, high levels of maternal and newborn morbidity, and endemic violence. We don’t know whether Omicron developed in a patient with HIV, but we do know that Covid mutations are more likely in patients with weakened immune systems. That’s because it takes longer for their bodies to clear the virus, giving the pathogen more time to change—and to spread to others. Right now, only a quarter of our population is fully vaccinated, and of the 8 million South Africans with AIDS, only 5 million are being treated with antiretrovirals. “These facts warrant a military-style operation” with “intersecting and complementary strategies for scaling up AIDS treatment and Covid-19 vaccinations and care.” Even if Omicron didn’t spring from South Africa, the next variant might.