The travel industry is warning of more job losses as countries ban flights to and from SA in response to a new variant in the country, saying SA is being punished for its scientists’ advanced genomic sequencing ability.
On Thursday, local scientists announced that a newly identified coronavirus variant — B1.1.529 — had been detected in SA and is thought to be behind the number of new cases in Gauteng. The variant has also been identified in Hong Kong.
The Covid-19 variant has not yet met the WHO criteria to be identified as a variant of concern or interest, according to the National Institute for Communicable Diseases.
It is not known yet if it will outsmart vaccines.
However, Britain announced on Thursday evening it was temporarily banning flights from SA, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Lesotho, Eswatini and Namibia from midday on Friday.
On Friday morning, Japan, Israel and the EU announced stricter measures against SA travelling to their part of the world.
Tourists were forced to cancel bookings overnight, sending the hospitality industry — which has had little government financial support for 18 months — back to the brink of collapse and hotel stocks plummeting.
Satsa, which represents more 1,300 tourism businesses, says SA cannot continue to be punished for scientists’ ability to identify variants.
“The British government’s knee-jerk reaction to institute a temporary red-list ban on six countries is exaggerated and punishes countries like SA with advanced genome-sequencing capability for finding new variants,” Satsa CEO David Frost said.
The UK is SA’s biggest market, with more than 400,000 tourists arriving annually before the pandemic.
The Airlines Association of Southern Africa called for the UK government to reassess its decision, “given the paucity of detailed knowledge and information on the newly identified variant”, saying it was not yet known if the variant would evade vaccines.
“The UK is delivering a body-blow to our region’s travel and tourism sector. It puts businesses and tens of thousands of jobs at risk,” said AASA CEO Aaron Munetsi.
Tourism minister Lindiwe Sisulu said the restrictions were disappointing.
“SA will continue working with policymakers in the UK, Japan, Israel and EU to ensure that the best possible interventions are put in place. I would like to commend the SA scientists on their diligence and all the work they have done and remain confident that all measures will be put in place to mitigate the spread of the virus,” Sisulu said.
“We remain open for business and tourism travel,” she added.
As tourists were forced to cancel their trips to SA, industry body Fedhasa, representing hotels, said the situation was “unsustainable”.
“We depend on tourism for jobs and livelihoods,” said CEO Rosemary Anderson.
The industry is calling for more adults to get vaccinated. Only about 35% of SA adults are fully vaccinated.
Anderson said: “South Africans need to go out and get vaccinated as a matter of urgency. To be locked down on a semi-regular basis and banned from international travel because of our advanced genomic sequencing capability and low vaccination rates cannot continue,” she said.
The UK bans, said Frost — the first to be announced — sent a signal to the world that it did not believe that vaccines would work against this new variant. However, it is not yet clear that vaccines will not protect against severe disease.
UCT infectious disease expert Prof Marc Mendelson said there was no data yet that showed that Covid-19 vaccines would not offer protection to B1.1.529. “Covid-19 vaccines have proven themselves extremely robust against all Sars-CoV-2 variants to date.”
Prof Shabir Madhi, dean of the Wits Faculty of Health Sciences, said that the Covid-19 vaccines prevented severe disease and it is likely they will also protect against serious illness caused by B1.1.529.
He said we should learn lessons from the response to the Beta variant, which led to SA being on the UK red list after concerns the vaccine did not prevent mild infection from that variant.
A Canadian study later concluded that the AstraZeneca vaccine conferred high protection against severe Covid-19 caused by the Beta variant, he said.
Correction November 26 2021
A previous version of this story reported that 24% of SA adults were fully vaccinated. The correct figure is 35%.
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