South Africa slams countries imposing travel bans due to Omicron fears

South Africarsquos top health federation on Sunday slammed the 18 nations which have imposed travel bans on the country on fears of the new potentially highlytransmissible variant of COVID19 Omicron saying the world must avoid such ldquokneejerk reactionrdquo if it wants ldquotransparencyrdquo in the sharing of critical medical dataThe new COVID19 variant B11529 first detected in South Africa was on Friday designated as a lsquoVariant of Concernrsquo by the World Health Organisation WHO which named it lsquoOmicronrsquoA healthcare worker conducts a COVID19 test on a traveller at OR Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg on SaturdayThe decision by 18 countries to ban flights to and from South Africa was premature as there is still not enough information on how dangerous the variant might be Angelique Coetzee Chairman of South African Medical Association SAMA saidCoetzee also defended the decision to announce the findings pointing out that South Africa should be lauded and not vilified for this ldquoMy suspicion is that because our scientists are very alert and doing a lot of sequencing in the background maybe those European countries missed it because of the symptomsrdquo Coetzee told the TV news channel Newzroom AfrikaThe UK announced on Thursday that all flights to and from South Africa and five neighbouring countries would be banned from Friday The UK has reported cases of Omicron variant infectionsMany other European countries followed suit most of them indicating that only their own citizens would be allowed back subject to a quarantine period Many other countries have now started to severely regulate or ban flights completely from the African nationCoetzee said ldquoThe symptoms are not the same as the Delta variant It is very similar to the Beta variant and you can easily miss the symptoms I think what happened with us in South Africa as clinicians is the fact that we have merely seen virtually maybe one or two patients per week in the past eight to ten weeks on COVIDrelated symptomsldquoWhen we all of a sudden saw young people especially men coming in complaining of extreme fatigue body aches and pains headaches and a bit of a scratchy throat we then started to test again and we found them positiverdquolsquoBeing seen as the villainsrsquoCoetzee said they decided to alert the Advisory Council on COVID19 that there were new symptoms that were not matching with the signs of the Delta variantldquoWe were lucky that we had a break in between and saw the new symptoms But now we are being seen as the villains Itrsquos not right It should never happen like this If the world wants transparency they would need to deal much better with this type of data that has been made availablerdquo Coetzee saidldquoAlert your people Say that there might be possibility of this going forward But therersquos no know way you can just have this kind of kneejerk reaction and say now you are saferdquo she added The Omicron variant has also been detected in Israel Hong Kong Belgium Germany Italy the Czech Republic and AustraliaMore countries find cases of the Omicron variantAustralian health officials on Sunday confirmed two cases of the Omicron coronavirus strain in the country The two travellers who arrived in Sydney on Saturday from Southern Africa were infected with the variant Kyodo News reportedThe Netherlands confirmed 13 cases of the Omicron variant They were among 61 people who tested positive on Friday after arriving on the last two flights to Amsterdamrsquos Schiphol airport before a flight banThe Omicron variant has been identified in a citizen from Italyrsquos Campania region who returned to Milan from Mozambique ldquosome days agordquo news agency ANSA reported Sunday His family of five people also tested positive His contacts are in isolation as a precautionary measure said the Campania region said in a statementThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever