WHO Africa head urges world to keep borders open third Omicron case found in UK. Scientists are already scrambling to understand the new Omicron variant. They are assessing its transmissability, whether its mutations spell greater disease severity and how it impacts existing vaccines.
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The strain was identified as a “variant of concern” by the World Health Organisation on 26 November – due to mutations to the virus’s spike protein that appear to boost its transmissability – which is a more serious designation than “variant of interest.”
Researchers at Bambino Gesu hospital in Rome, Italy, on Sunday released a three-dimensional image of the variant. The researchers said in a statement
Rwanda suspended direct flights to and from southern Africa on Sunday to prevent the new Omicron Covid strain’s spread, the prime minister’s office said.
It comes after the landlocked east African country reimposed a 24-hour quarantine on Friday, coming into effect Sunday, for all arriving travellers.
Prime minister Édouard Ngirente’s office also said it would now be compulsory to be fully vaccinated and tested at events such as conferences and concerts.
But the World Health Organization’s regional director for Africa, Matshidiso Moeti, urged countries on Sunday to avoid travel bans, as the transmissibility and severity of the new variant are still being investigated and such a policy “attacks global solidarity”. (See my earlier post for more details.
The Czech president Miloš Zeman carried out the prime minister’s inauguration ceremony from a glass perspex cubicle on Sunday, after becoming the latest in a long tally of world leaders to test positive for Covid.
Zeman sat in a wheelchair and wore a face covering while appointing Petr Fiala, of the centre-right Civic Democratic party, as prime minister at the Lány Chateau near Prague. He was accompanied by a medic in full protective gear.
Leaders such as the French president, Emmanuel Macron, former US president Donald Trump, Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, and UK prime minister, Boris Johnson, who became critically ill with the disease, have all tested positive for the virus.
Fiala ousted incumbent Andrej Babiš, whose offshore financial arrangements were spotlighted by The Guardian’s Pandora Papers investigation published last month.
The new Czech government’s agenda includes suppressing a new wave of Covid infections threatening to overwhelm hospitals, with Czech positive tests surging to 27,793 on Friday from 5,842 four weeks before on 29 October.
The Czech government declared a 30-day state of emergency on Friday, introducing new restrictions such as banning Christmas markets and imposing a 10pm curfew on restaraunts, bars and nightclubs.
WHO’s Africa director: Keep borders open amid Omicron
The head of the World Health Organization in Africa on Sunday urged countries to keep borders open, saying banning flights over the potentially more transmissable Omicron strain “attacks global solidarity.”
“With the Omicron variant now detected in several regions of the world, putting in place travel bans that target Africa attacks global solidarity,” said WHO regional director for Africa, Matshidiso Moet, AFP reported.
The WHO said in a statement it stands with African nations and calls for borders to remain open, after a spate of travel bans were announced on Sunday.
“Travel restrictions may play a role in slightly reducing the spread of Covid-19 but place a heavy burden on lives and livelihoods,” the UN agency’s statement said. “If restrictions are implemented, they should not be unnecessarily invasive or intrusive, and should be scientifically based.”
Moet’s comments come after Cyril Ramaphosa, president of South Africa, where Omicron was first sequencesd on 24 November, called on countries to “urgently” reverse “scientifically unjustified” flight bans.
“The only thing the prohibition on travel will do is to further damage the economies of the affected countries and undermine their ability to respond to, and recover from, the pandemic,” he added, urging South Africans to get vaccinated.
The WHO and other researchers are still assessing the virulence and severity of the strain and whether it could evade existing vaccines – with preliminary research showing more than 30 mutations to the virus spike protein.
G7 health ministers to hold urgent meeting on Monday over Omicron strain
G7 health ministers will hold an urgent meeting on Monday to discuss the Omicron variant.
The G7 is made up of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and US, and currently the UK holds presidency.
The meeting follows a flurry of positive Omicron test results in the UK, Germany and Italy, with the French health minister saying on Sunday that the strain is likely to also be circulating in France. “There is no identification yet, but it’s a matter of hours,” Olivier Veran said.
“Under the UK presidency an urgent meeting of G7 health ministers will also be convened on Monday 29 November to discuss the developments on Omicron,” the Department of Health and Social Care said on Sunday.
On Saturday Gharib Ahmed spent five hours outside the police station in Calais, desperately waiting for news. “It was so cold. There was no answer,” he said. Ahmed was seeking confirmation that his brother-in-law Twana Mamand was one of 27 people who died in the Channel on Wednesday after the flimsy dinghy taking them to the UK sank. “I want to see his body. I have to understand,” Ahmed told the Guardian.
Relatives of the mostly Iraqi Kurds who perished in the world’s busiest shipping lane spent the weekend in a state of anxiety and confusion. Ahmed said he last heard from his brother-in-law at 3am on Wednesday, around the time Twana set off in darkness from a beach near Dunkirk. After two days of silence, Ahmed travelled with his wife, Kale Mamand – Twana’s sister – from their home in London to northern France, arriving on Friday night.
The bodies of those who died were taken to a basement mortuary inside Calais hospital on the outskirts of the port. According to Ahmed, French detectives told him it would not be possible to definitively identify Twana until 10am on Monday, when the hospital facility reopens. “They have done DNA tests. They explained that sometimes you don’t recognise, if you see a body, that faces can change or be bruised, and that DNA is better,” he said.
Ahmed said he was unwilling for now to accept that Twana was gone. In the meantime, he was spending his hours on the phone, talking to family who live near the town of Ranya in Iraqi Kurdistan, and to Iraqi government officials who have offered to bring Twana’s body home, and to local refugee charities. “I don’t want to make anyone happy or sad until we know for sure,” he said. “There are six to eight families in the same situation.