Almost two years after the COVID-19 pandemic, the world fought on Friday to contain a new variant of the coronavirus that may be more dangerous than the one that has fueled relentless waves of infections on every continent.
A panel of the World Health Organization named the variant “Omicron” and classified it as a highly transmissible virus of concern, the same category that includes the prevalent Delta variant, which is still a scourge in Europe and parts of the EU United States leads higher illnesses and deaths.
“It seems to be spreading rapidly,” President Joe Biden said of the new variant, just a day after celebrating the resumption of Thanksgiving meetings for millions of American families and the feeling that life is returning to normal, at least for the vaccinated. When he announced new travel restrictions, he told reporters, “I’ve decided that we’re going to be careful.”
The real risks of Omicron are unknown. However, initial evidence suggests an increased risk of reinfection compared to other highly transmissible variants, said the WHO. This means that people who have contracted COVID-19 and recovered could become infected again. It could be weeks before we know if the current vaccines are less effective against this.
In response to the discovery of the variant in southern Africa, the United States, Canada, Russia, and a host of other countries have joined the European Union to restrict travel for visitors from southern Africa, where the variant has brought new spikes in infections .
The White House said the US would restrict travel from South Africa and seven other countries in the region from Monday. Biden said this meant “no travel” to or from the designated countries, except for returning US citizens and permanent residents who tested negative.
Medical experts, including the WHO, warned of overreaction before the variant was better understood. But a nervous world feared the worst almost two years after the persistent virus emerged, sparking a pandemic that killed more than 5 million people worldwide.
“We have to act quickly and at the earliest possible time,” UK Health Secretary Sajid Javid told lawmakers.
Omicron has since been seen with travelers to Belgium, Hong Kong and Israel, as well as southern Africa.
There was no immediate indication of whether the variant caused more severe illness. As with other variants, some infected people show no symptoms, South African experts said. The WHO panel relied on the Greek alphabet when naming the variant Omicron, as was the case with previous main variants of the virus.
While some of the genetic changes appear worrying, it was unclear how great the public health threat was. Some earlier variants, such as the beta variant, initially worried scientists but did not spread very widely.
The 27-nation European Union suspended air traffic from southern Africa and slumped stocks in Asia, Europe and the United States. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost more than 1,000 points before rising in the afternoon. The S&P 500 index closed its worst day since February at 2.3%. The oil price collapsed by 13%.
“The last thing we need is a new variant that will cause even more problems,” said Federal Health Minister Jens Spahn. The member states of the EU have seen a massive increase in the number of cases recently.
EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said flights must “be suspended until we have a clear understanding of the danger posed by this new variant, and travelers returning from this region should adhere to strict quarantine rules”.
She warned that “mutations could lead to the emergence and spread of even more worrying variants of the virus that could spread around the world in a matter of months.”
“It’s a suspicious variant,” said Frank Vandenbroucke, Health Minister in Belgium, which was the first EU country to announce a case of the variant. “We don’t know if it’s a very dangerous variant.”
Omicron has yet to be detected in the United States, said Dr. Anthony Fauci, the US Government’s foremost infectious disease expert. While it may be more transmissible and more resistant to vaccines than other variants, “we don’t really know right now,” he told CNN.
Speaking to reporters outside a bookstore on Nantucket Island where he was spending the holiday weekend, Biden said the new variant was “a major concern” that “should make clearer than ever why this pandemic won’t end until we have global vaccinations “.
He again called for unvaccinated Americans to get their widespread doses and for governments to forego intellectual property protection for COVID-19 vaccines so they can be manufactured faster around the world.
Israel, one of the most vaccinated countries in the world, announced on Friday that it had also discovered its first case of the new variant in a traveler who has returned from Malawi. The traveler and two other suspected cases were isolated. Israel said all three were vaccinated, but officials were investigating travelers’ exact vaccination status.
After a 10-hour overnight journey, passengers on board KLM Flight 598 from Cape Town, South Africa to Amsterdam were held on the edge of the runway at Schiphol Airport on Friday morning for four hours pending special tests. Passengers on board a flight from Johannesburg were also isolated and tested.
“It’s ridiculous. If we haven’t caught the dreaded bug first, we’ll catch it now,” said passenger Francesca de ‘Medici, a Rome-based art consultant who was on the flight.
Some experts said the emergence of the variant shows how vaccine hoarding in rich countries threatens to prolong the pandemic.
Less than 6% of people in Africa are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, and millions of health workers and vulnerable populations have not yet received a single dose. These conditions can accelerate the spread of the virus and provide more opportunities for it to develop into a dangerous variant.
“This is one of the consequences of the injustice in the introduction of vaccines and why the adoption of surplus vaccines by richer countries will inevitably fall back on all of us at some point,” said Michael Head, senior research fellow on global health at the University of Southampton, UK. He urged the group of 20 leaders “to go beyond vague promises and actually keep their promises to share cans”.
The new twist heightened investor fears that months of progress in containing COVID-19 could be reversed.
“Investors will likely shoot first and ask questions later until more is known,” said Jeffrey Halley of currency broker Oanda.
The African Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advised against travel bans for countries that reported the new variant. Experience so far has shown that such travel bans “did not produce any meaningful result”.
But much of the world has moved quickly to close or severely limit contact with travelers from southern Africa.
US restrictions apply to visitors from South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Lesotho, Eswatini, Mozambique, and Malawi. The White House suggested that the restrictions reflect a previous pandemic policy that banned the entry of foreigners who had traveled to the designated regions in the past two weeks.
The UK banned flights from South Africa and five other South African countries and announced that anyone who recently entered from those countries will be asked to take a coronavirus test.
Canada has banned entry to all foreigners who have traveled to southern Africa in the past two weeks.
The Japanese government announced that Japanese nationals traveling from Eswatini, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Botswana, South Africa and Lesotho will be quarantined in government-designated accommodations for 10 days and will be required to perform three COVID-19 tests during that time . Japan has not yet opened up to foreigners. Russia announced travel restrictions from Sunday.
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Woodward reported from Washington. Associate press authors Lorne Cook in Brussels, Colleen Barry in Milan, Pan Pylas in London, Jamey Keaten in Geneva, Mike Corder in The Hague, Dave McHugh in Frankfurt, Carley Petesch in Dakar, Andrew Meldrum in Johannesburg and Frank Jordans in Berlin have to. contributed this report.
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World Races to Contain New COVID Threat, the Omicron Variant
