US, Germany bank on curbs to tackle threat
China is working on vaccines specifically targeting the new Covid variant
WASHINGTON/BERLIN: The US and Germany joined countries around the globe planning stricter Covid-19 restrictions on Thursday in an effort to tackle the new Omicron variant. Much remains unknown about Omicron, which was first found on November 8 in South Africa.
The Biden administration announced a set of measures to combat the pandemic while keeping schools and businesses open as winter sets in forcing people to spend longer hours indoors. The measures include more stringent testing rules for inbound international travellers, in-transit masking on public transport, extending free at-home testing kits, deploying mobile vaccination clinics to administer first and booster doses and launching campaigns to disseminate and reinforce the benefits of Covid-19 vaccines.
Meanwhile, health authorities in the mid-western US state of Minnesota announced on Thursday they had found another case of the Omicron variant on American soil, this time in a man with no known recent international travel history.
The new measures agreed in Germany focus on the unvaccinated, who will be barred from access to all but the most essential businesses such as grocery stores and pharmacies.
Germany is also planning legislation to make vaccination mandatory.
“We have understood that the situation is very serious and that we want to take further measures in addition to those already taken,” Chancellor Angela
Merkel told a news conference. “To do this, the fourth wave must be broken and this has not yet been achieved,” she said, referring to Germany’s latest surge in cases.
A nationwide vaccination mandate could take effect from February 2022 after it is debated in the Bundestag and after guidance from Germany’s Ethics Council, she said.
South Africa said it was seeing an increase in Covid-19 reinfections in patients contracting Omicron - with people who have already had the illness getting infected again - in a way that it did not see with other variants.
The World Health Organization’s Africa director said quick detection and reporting of the new Omicron variant of the coronavirus by Botswana and South Africa have “bought the world time” as nations are scrambling to stop it from spreading.
Dr Matshidiso Moeti said on Thursday that “we have a window of opportunity but must act quickly and ramp up detection and prevention measures”.
Travel restrictions
Russia has imposed a two-week quarantine for travellers from some African countries including South Africa, the Interfax news agency said, quoting a senior official.
Hong Kong extended a travel ban to more countries.
In the Netherlands, health authorities called for pre-flight Covid-19 tests for all travel from outside the European Union, after it turned out that about 90% of the 62 passengers who tested positive after arriving on two flights from South Africa on November 26 - including all those with the Omicron variant had been vaccinated.
Accelerating research
Glaxosmithkline said its Covid-19 antibody treatment looks to be effective against the new Omicron variant in early tests. Lab tests of the mutations found in the variant showed the drug is still active against the virus, Glaxo said on Thursday.
“We are rapidly pushing forward the research and development of Omicron-specific vaccines based on different technologies,” Zheng Zhongwei, who heads a group tasked with Covid-19 vaccine development in China, said.
With inputs by Yashwant Raj