JOHANNESBURG - President Cyril Ramaphosa in his address to the nation on Sunday said South Africa would remain on alert level 1.
The address comes after Ramaphosa had meetings with the National Coronavirus Command Council, the President’s Co-ordinating Council and Cabinet.Earlier this week scientists identified a new variant of the coronavirus that causes the COVID-19 disease.The Omicron variant was first described in Botswana and subsequently in South Africa, and scientists have also identified cases in countries such as Hong Kong, Australia, Belgium, Italy, the United Kingdom, Germany, Austria, Denmark and Israel.
The President said what 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. "It’s naive to believe that imposing travel bans on a handful of countries will stop the import of a variant. This virus will disperse across the globe unless you are an island nation that shuts off the rest of the world.
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