Financial Mail and Business Day

Ramaphosa: bans on travel ‘unscientific’

• Task team on mandatory vaccination set up • No tighter restrictions in SA on the cards yet

Tamar Kahn and Katharine Child

President Cyril Ramaphosa has called on the growing list of countries that have imposed travel restrictions on SA and neighbouring states in response to last week’s detection of the Omicron coronavirus variant to “immediately and urgently” reverse their position.

Describing their position as unscientific and “completely unjustified”, and at odds with an agreement reached at last month’s Group of 20 summit in Rome, he said the travel bans would do nothing to stop the spread of Omicron but would damage fragile regional economies struggling to respond to the pandemic.

Omicron should serve as “a wake-up call to the world” about the dangers of vaccine inequity, which has seen Africa lag the rest of the world in inoculation.

“Until everyone is vaccinated, everyone will be at risk,” he said in an address to the nation on Sunday night.

Ramaphosa said the government had established a task team on mandatory vaccination and was considering making vaccination compulsory “for specific activities and locations.

“We recognise it is complex and difficult, but if we do not address it as a matter of urgency, we will continue to be vulnerable to new variants and will continue to suffer new waves of infection,” he said.

A steadily growing number of companies and universities have introduced compulsory vaccination policies, but large swathes of the economy have yet to do so.

GLOBAL ALARM

SA’s announcement last week that it had identified a new variant dubbed Omicron — with dozens of mutations that scientists fear may increase transmission or reduce the protection offered by vaccines and prior infection — triggered global alarm, prompting a rapidly growing list of countries to restrict travel to SA and neighbouring states.

The developments battered local hotel companies, and insurance and banking stocks, and sowed panic in the tourism

industry. Industry associations estimate the SA tourism sector lost R1bn in cancellations at the weekend alone.

SA reported its detection of the new variant, also known as B.1.1.529, to the World Health Organization (WHO) on November 24 and went public with its findings a day later.

Despite scientists warning that travel bans come too late to stop the global spread of variants such as Omicron, more than a dozen countries, including the UK, US, Canada, EU members, Israel, Japan, the Philippines and Singapore, have imposed travel restrictions on Southern Africa, including on some nations that have not detected the variant.

The emergence of Omicron has coincided with a rapid increase in infections in Gauteng, but the variant is present in all SA provinces, Ramaphosa said.

While cases are rising fast, the government will not tighten restrictions at this stage, he said, urging the unvaccinated to get their shots as soon as possible.

ON SUNDAY 90% OF SA’S NEWLY DIAGNOSED CASES WERE IN GAUTENG, AND THE NATIONAL TEST POSITIVITY RATE HAD ALMOST TRIPLED

On Sunday, 2,308, or 90%, of SA’s 2,848 newly diagnosed cases were in Gauteng, and the national test positivity rate had almost tripled from a week earlier, to 9.8%. The seven-day moving average of new cases stood at 1,600, up from 500 a week before and 275 a fortnight ago, he said.

“This is an extremely sharp rise in infections in a short space of time. If cases continue to climb, we can expect to enter a fourth wave of infections within the next few weeks, if not sooner”, said the president, urging the public to avoid large gatherings.

SHARP RISE

The government’s vaccination programme, initially hobbled by bureaucratic bungling and supply constraints, is now battling with flagging demand that has seen the daily uptake dwindle from a peak of 280,000 a day to about 110,000 on weekdays. By November 27, 25.3-million people had received at least one dose of either the Johnson & Johnson vaccine or the Pfizer/BioNTech double-shot vaccine, but only 35.6% of adults were fully immunised. Even the offer of booster shots to healthcare workers has seen a lukewarm response, with only 129,600 (26%) of the half a million people who received a jab in the Sisonke study so far coming forward for a second shot.

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2021-11-29T08:00:00.0000000Z

2021-11-29T08:00:00.0000000Z

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