South Africa on Saturday said it was being "punished" for its advanced ability to detect new COVID-19 variants early, as several countries imposed travel ban on it due to the new potentially highly-transmissible Omicron variant, first detected here.
The Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO) in a statement urged world leaders not to implement “knee-jerk" policy decisions in response to the detection of the Omicron variant.
The latest round of travel bans is "akin to punishing South Africa for its advanced genomic sequencing and the ability to detect new variants quicker.
Excellent science should be applauded and not punished," it said. DIRCO pointed out that new variants had been detected in other countries as well