President Joe Biden will limit air travel from eight African nations beginning Monday, in an effort to keep the mutant Omicron variant of COVID-19 from entering the United States, senior administration officials revealed.
Following advice from Dr. Anthony Fauci and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the administration will restrict flights from South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Lesotho, Eswatini, Mozambique, and Malawi. Details on the exact policy remained sparse. However, officials proffered assurances that U.S. citizens and permanent residents will be able to return home, so long as they test negative for the novel coronavirus before arriving.
In a statement, Biden urged vaccinated Americans to get their booster shots—and for the uninoculated to finally take the jab. His message to foreign governments similarly emphasized vaccines.
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“The news about this new variant should make clearer than ever why this pandemic will not end until we have global vaccinations,” Biden said, calling on other countries to loosen their patent laws to allow global manufacturing of the shots.
The administration characterized the travel restrictions as arising from “an abundance of caution,” and noted other countries have imposed new requirements on arrivals from Southern Africa. However, the U.S. has targeted a slightly broader range of nations than the United Kingdom and European Union, which were among the first to introduce restrictions to control the spread of the Omicron variant.
Scientists are racing to better understand the newest strain of the pathogen, which features a highly mutated spike protein, which the virus uses to hack into healthy cells—and which the most common vaccines neutralize.
The officials emphasized that the U.S. has offered substantial assistance to Africa during the pandemic, including shipping them vaccines and ramping up native production in South Africa.
Beyond Africa, Health authorities have detected Omicron in Hong Kong and Belgium.
