Ramaphosa is addressing the many non-African countries, including the Netherlands, that have responded with abrupt travel restrictions in recent days to the discovery of the new corona variant in South Africa.
Ramaphosa made his urgent appeal on Sunday evening in a half-hour live televised South African televised speech, the first since South Africa announced the existence of the variant dubbed ‘omikron’ last Thursday. He announced that his government is considering making a corona access pass mandatory for ‘specific activities and locations’. This measure is still virtually unknown in Africa and appears to be partly intended to persuade South Africans to be vaccinated. South Africa, unlike other countries in the region, has many vaccines.
But Ramaphosa also emphatically used his speech to criticize the dissatisfaction with the attitude of non-African countries, widely shared in South Africa. “Deeply disappointed” is Ramaphosa about the entry bans that have been introduced by the most diverse countries, from Great Britain, the US and EU Member States to Sri Lanka, Thailand and Guatemala.
‘Discriminatory’
‘Discriminatory’, added Ramaphosa – neatly formulated as always, but also apparently agitated. According to him, travel bans are of little use in the fight against the corona virus, an argument that is shared by the World Health Organization, among others. Ramaphosa dryly listed a series of countries that have announced entry bans and where the omikron variant has nevertheless been identified: ‘Hong Kong, Australia, Belgium, Italy, the United Kingdom, Germany, Austria, Denmark and Israel.’
These countries will probably argue that they had to try something against the spread of the new variant, but Ramaphosa makes it clear that as far as South Africa is concerned, the stocking is far from over. He made his statements after Britain and the US rushed to compliment South Africa on its outstanding scientists, who had managed to inform the rest of the world about the latest corona mutation. , but who last week were made to feel their “reward” consisted of pariah status for South Africa. Our ‘world famous’ scientists do ‘excellent’ work, as Ramaphosa took up for his compatriots.
fourth wave
The domestic public also questioned whether Ramaphosa would introduce new corona measures in response to the omikron variant. Epidemiologists predict a new corona wave, the fourth for the 60 million inhabitants of South Africa, where 90 thousand corona deaths have officially occurred since the start of the pandemic and the medical research council has also registered an excess mortality of no less than 272 thousand people.
Presumably as a result of the new variant, infections are rising rapidly again: from just 312 last Monday to 3,200 last Saturday. More than 80 percent of these cases come from Gauteng province, which includes the metropolitan city of Johannesburg.
But there are no new lockdown measures yet, Ramaphosa made clear. South Africa remains at the ‘lowest’ of five tiers, meaning, for example, a curfew between midnight and 4 a.m. and indoor gatherings are limited to 700 people – that falls for most South Africans probably alive.
Obligation
What is essentially new is the idea of making vaccination compulsory in some cases. For example, Ramaphosa said, for those who still want access to ‘workplaces’, ‘public events’ and ‘public transport’. A special team will further investigate such a type of corona pass and will report to the cabinet, which will then make a decision. Ramaphosa called the topic “difficult” and “complex”, but also warned that without adequate vaccinations, South Africa remains susceptible to “new variants” of the coronavirus and “new waves” of infections.
Ramaphosa probably hopes in this way to encourage South Africans to get vaccinated. There is no shortage of vaccines: almost 17 million doses are on the shelf in South Africa. Last Wednesday, a day before the announcement of the omikron variant, South Africa even informed the pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson that they could keep some shipments of vaccines that had already been ordered for the time being.
A problem in South Africa is the fairly widespread vaccination skepticism, coupled with a distribution that sometimes leaves something to be desired. Although the vaccination rate of 35 percent among adults is significantly higher than in other African countries, the South African government’s target of 70 percent by the end of the year is close to being met. Hence Ramaphosa’s urgent appeal to the population: ‘Everyone of us should be vaccinated.’
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