Dr. Anthony Fauci recently said that officials are reviewing the ban on travel to several countries in southern Africa after confirmations from a dozen countries of the COVID-19 micron variant.
After the World Health Organization confirmed that there was a new variant, the U.S implemented travel bans on 7 countries from southern Africa. Fauci stated that the U.S. will reevaluate its travel ban in light of new information, but didn’t say when.
Fauci stated that the ban was placed at a time they weren’t really aware of what was happening. He said that the ban was placed to allow them to work out what was happening. He said that there is more and more information on cases in our country and around the world. He said they are looking at that very closely on a daily basis.
Fauci said that officials felt “very bad” about the “hardships” that the travel ban had created for southern African countries. Hementioned that one of the encouraging signs is the fact that omicron’s severity has not yet met its clearly higher transmissibility.
It was reported that while cases have increased sharply in the last two weeks with almost a vertical rise in daily new cases, South Africa still has not seen a similar increase in hospitalizations and deaths. Although officials need to monitor these numbers for a few weeks more, Fauci advised cautious optimism.
