The government believes it has nothing to be ashamed of and denounces its stigmatization for being the announcer of bad news, like a multitude of South African Internet users as indignant as they are worried.

"This latest round of travel bans amounts to punishing South Africa for its advanced genomic sequencing and its ability to detect new variants more quickly. Scientific excellence should be applauded and not punished," the government said on Saturday, two days after the announcement of this discovery, dubbed Omicron by the WHO.

"New variants have been detected in other countries. Each of these cases has no recent link to southern Africa. It should be noted that the response to these countries is radically different from that of the cases. in southern Africa ", still regrets the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in a press release.

From Friday evening, the day after the revelation of this new variant during a press conference of scientists under his leadership, the Minister of Health denounced the Pavlovian and "draconian" reaction of many countries which immediately closed their borders even before to know more about its dangerousness.

"Some leaders are looking for scapegoats to solve a problem that is global", denounced Joe Phaahla, evoking a reaction of "panic".

Scientifically unfounded

Pretoria fears the impact of these closures on "families, the travel and tourism industry, businesses".

But also that they dissuade other countries from reporting the discovery of future variants for fear of finding themselves sanctioned.

"We are sometimes punished for being transparent and doing things quickly," lamented South African virology star Tulio de Oliveira, who, with his team at the KRISP research institute, detected the variant.

According to the Brazilian researcher based in Zulu country, travel bans do not "scientifically make a lot of sense" in the fight against Covid.

Washington had imposed a similar ban on China at the start of the pandemic, before ending up with the highest number of infections, he recalls.

A new variant of Covid-19 John SAEKI AFP

The government also pleads that South Africa has many assets against the pandemic: its "ability to test", the application of health protocols, especially in terms of transport.

Its level of vaccination too - at 23.8% against 54% of the world population, it is little, but significantly more than in the rest of Africa.

These elements, "supported by a world-class scientific community, should reassure our global partners that we are doing as well as they are in managing the pandemic", argues Pretoria.

And the Minister of Foreign Affairs Naledi Pandor, if she "respects" the right of countries to protect their citizens as they see fit, still wants to recall that "this pandemic requires collaboration and sharing of expertise".

© 2021 AFP