President Cyril Ramaphosa says the emergence of a more mutable COVID-19 variant in South Africa and some neighbouring countries should serve as a wake-up to the West that its “vaccine apartheid” will backfire and negate current efforts to end the pandemic.
Scientists from South Africa and Botswana last week reported the discovery of a new coronavirus variant called Omicron, a development that triggered a knee-jerk response by most Western countries that immediately banned travellers from eight southern African nations.
“We have said that vaccine inequality not only costs lives and livelihoods in those countries that are denied access, but that it also threatens global efforts to overcome the pandemic,” Ramaphosa said during a televised address to South Africans on Sunday night.
He added: “The emergence of the Omicron variant should be a wake-up call to the world that vaccine inequality cannot be allowed to continue.”
The South African leader warned that there is a high “likelihood of the emergence of more severe forms of variants” should people from developing countries remain unvaccinated.
“That is why we have joined many countries, organisations and people around the world who have been fighting for equal access to vaccines for everyone.”
The World Health Organization has declared Omicron a “variant of concern”.
The variant was first described in Botswana and subsequently in South Africa, and scientists have also identified cases in countries such as Hong Kong, Australia, Belgium, Italy, the United Kingdom, Germany, Austria, Denmark and Israel.
The identification of Omicron coincides with a sudden rise in COVID-19 infections in South Africa which has “seen an average of 1,600 new cases in the last seven days, compared to just 500 new daily cases in the previous week and 275 new daily cases the week before that.”
JN/APA