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A woman wearing a face mask holds a child on her back on a crowded street in Pretoria, South Africa, on November 27. Photo: AP
Opinion
Phil C. W. Chan
Phil C. W. Chan

Why shunning South Africa based on Covid-19 Omicron variant fears is counterproductive

  • South Africa acted as a good global citizen in promptly reporting the new variant. In response, various countries have imposed a ban on flights from South Africa and its neighbours
  • This sends a message to other states where variants could emerge that it might not be in their national interest to be transparent

For someone who is not a professional journalist, I seem frequently to be blessed with opportunities to look at societies through “fieldwork research” beyond my original intentions. I walked into the lion’s den again as I began a three-month visit to South Africa on November 24.

Little did I know South Africa had identified the newest coronavirus variant that has a large number of mutations and has shown, based on preliminary evidence, an increased risk of reinfection, and that as a responsible state it reported the discovery to the World Health Organization on the same day I departed for Cape Town.
Having learned from its delay in declaring a pandemic after the coronavirus first emerged in Wuhan in January 2020, the WHO on November 26 designated the new variant as one “of concern” and named it Omicron.
Instead of thanking South Africa for its integrity in promptly identifying and sharing information about the variant, a multitude of states (and Hong Kong) swiftly announced travel bans on flights and travellers from South Africa and neighbouring countries.

Chaos inevitably followed at Johannesburg and Cape Town international airports, where long queues of travellers clung to hopes they might get a seat on the last flights out of the country despite eye-watering fares on convoluted routes.

02:24

UK bans travel from South Africa after emergence of new heavily-mutated Covid-19 variant

UK bans travel from South Africa after emergence of new heavily-mutated Covid-19 variant

Angelique Coetzee, the South African doctor who first raised the alarm over a potential new variant among her patients, and chairperson of the South African Medical Association, has reported that symptoms of the variant were “unusual but mild”, consisting essentially of lethargy.

On the other hand, the devastating damage to South Africa’s already struggling economy during its peak summer tourist season is ongoing.

Without hesitation, I decided to stay put in South Africa, not least because the notion that one forsakes life to live in fear is not one that appeals to me. In addition, I wished to stand with South Africa in South Africa.

As the world is panicking over Omicron by reimposing travel bans and testing and quarantine requirements, and the markets shed tens of billions of dollars, the sunny sky here has not fallen, and residents are calmly going about their lives without fear or hindrance.

Restaurants that I visited were all full of diners, supplies in supermarkets were in abundance, and I was happy Dettol products were being sold at discounted prices. The South Africans I met remained optimistic and hopeful.

People are seen on a commercial street in Cape Town, South Africa, on Sunday. Photo: Xinhua

The truth of the matter is that we all must live with the coronavirus as we do HIV; neither is going to go away. Governments need to stop engaging in pandemic scaremongering. It is as irresponsible for a government to perpetuate fear and impose tyrannical encumbrances on our daily lives as it is to do nothing to bring about herd immunity.

Humans by nature are social beings; preventing them from enjoying full, meaningful social lives on pain of criminal penalties because of the coronavirus is reminiscent of telling gay men, in the 1980s and 1990s, that their sexual activity, and their very homosexuality, was dooming them to death.

We must be mindful of the first principle set out in the preamble to the constitution of the WHO: “Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.”
Travellers look at flight information, including boards showing cancelled flights, at Cape Town International Airport on November 28. The European Union and countries such as Japan and Israel moved to ban travellers from southern Africa following the discovery of the highly mutated Covid-19 variant, Omicron. Photo: EPA-EFE
Above all, as I wrote in the Post in March 2020, the coronavirus has laid bare the myth of international solidarity. Like HIV, the coronavirus will eventually become manageable.
At the same time, however, many pressing issues of our time, such as climate change and maintenance of international peace and security, require international solidarity and cooperation, and trust among states.

South Africa has had its struggles for the past century as a result, to name but a few, of apartheid, decades of international isolation, comprehensive social transformation since apartheid, and the HIV epidemic.

Shunning South Africa now as if anyone who has touched soil in the country were a threat, because its scientists and government were forthright enough to help the world bring the coronavirus pandemic to an end through genome sequencing and information sharing, is not how civilised states ought to behave.

Such myopic and self-interested behaviour only illustrates to other states where variants might emerge – that is, every corner of the globe – that in their national interest, they perhaps should follow the example set by China in 2003.

Phil C.W. Chan is a legal scholar and recipient of the 25th Human Rights Press Awards (Merit, 2021) for Commentary Writing for his three-part series in the Post in 2020 on Hong Kong society in the era of China’s national security law for Hong Kong

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