EXPERT SAYS BIDEN'S TRAVEL BAN ON ONLY AFRICAN NATIONSOVER OMICRON VARIANT 'COUNTERPRODUCTIVE'.

Dr. Michael Osterholm, a Regents Professor

"The Omicron variant is all over the world. Most health experts have asserted that imposing a travel ban only on African nations is counterproductive and will achieve nothing." Dr Osterholm.

U.S. President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s travel ban on eight African nations over the Omicron variant is “counterproductive,” says Dr. Michael Osterholm, a Regents Professor who is the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota and author of The New York Times bestseller “Deadliest Enemy: Our War Against Killer germs.” He also worked for President-elect Biden during the transition.

Asked by Peter Bergen, a CNN’s national security analyst, a vice president at New America and a professor of practice at Arizona State University, whether President Biden’s November 26 travel ban on South Africa, Botswana, Mozambique, Malawi, Namibia, Lesotho, and Eswatini, was helpful, Dr. Osterholm responded. “No. The new variant was all around the world in the month of November.”
Biden’s travel ban was issued on November 26 and went into effect on November 29. It targets only countries in Africa, including nations where the Omicron variant has not yet been identified.

Yet, the Omicron variant is all over the world. Most health experts have asserted that imposing a travel ban only on African nations is counterproductive and will achieve nothing. The United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres compared it to a travel “apartheid.”

In addition, more than a month after the variant was first detected in Botswana on November 11, those who have caught it have suffered no severe effects. But media houses have continued to try to push that false narrative that this would be doom and gloom. It’s almost like trying to create doom and gloom that does not exist. And that is our top story today.

Simon Ateba, Publisher and White House Correspondent for Today News Africa in Washington DC.