As omicron variant is detected around the world, travel bans may be too late, experts say

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Sun, 2021-11-28 11:12 — mike kraft

As omicron variant is detected around the world, travel bans may be too late, experts say Governments are scrambling to close their borders to travelers from southern Africa, where a potentially dangerous new variant was first found. Washington Post

As governments scrambled to close their borders to southern African countries as a shield against a potentially dangerous new coronavirus variant, experts warned the travel bans may be too late — with confirmed and suspected cases cropping up as far away as Asia and Australia.

The variant, dubbed omicron, has a high number of mutations that could make it more easily transmissible. It was identified by scientists in South Africa, where early data suggest it is spreading more quickly than the now-dominant variant known as delta. Several countries, including the United States, have curbed flights from the region while epidemiologists work to identify how far the variant may have spread.

“By the time we have enough information to institute a travel ban, the cat’s already out of the bag, so to speak,” Nicole A. Errett, a professor at the University of Washington who has done research on public health emergency preparedness, said in an email. “Omicron has already been detected in other continents. A travel ban could in theory buy some time by reducing the spread of new seed cases, but we are talking on the order of days to weeks,” she added.

What to know about the omicron variant of the coronavirus

Confirmed and suspected covid-19 cases caused by the new variant have been detected in a growing number of regions, including Britain, Belgium, Botswana, Germany, Italy, Hong Kong, Israel and the Czech Republic. Most of the cases outside Africa appear to involve people who had traveled to the continent. ...

Health officials in Australia on Sunday confirmed two fully vaccinated, asymptomatic passengers on a flight into Sydney tested positive for the new coronavirus variant and are now in government isolation. They were among 14 people from southern Africa who arrived Saturday evening on a flight from Doha, Qatar, officials said. All 260 people aboard the plane are considered close contacts and have been ordered to self-quarantine. Canberra announced a two-week travel ban on nine southern African countries....

The emergence of a new and potentially more menacing variant raises questions about what lessons officials have learned in the past two years, and whether they’re prepared for worrisome mutations that could evade current vaccines.

Israel bars all foreigners, reinstates phone surveillance in effort to contain omicron variant

In Britain, the former head of the government’s vaccine task force accused leaders of ignoring a plan to prepare for the emergence of vaccine-resistant variants. Clive Dix, who chaired the vaccine task force until April, told the Guardian’s Observer that he wrote a “very specific proposal on what we should put in place right now for the emergence of any new virus that escaped the vaccine,” adding: “I haven’t seen a sign of any of those activities yet.” ..

U.S. officials said they quickly jumped into action after learning that the new variant contained long-feared mutations, such as the potential ability to evade vaccinations, and appeared to descend from a different genetic lineage than delta. Senior officials such as Fauci, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky and others began discussions with government scientists, South African officials and vaccine manufacturers that intensified on Thanksgiving Day.

President Biden and White House officials this weekend also urged unvaccinated Americans to get inoculated and called on eligible adults to get booster shots, saying that the vaccines remain the best protection against the virus. ...

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