When Prof Tulio de Oliveira of the Centre for Epidemic Response & Innovation (Ceri) announced the discovery of the then unnamed Sars-CoV-2 variant last week, little did he know what the unintended consequences of his actions would be.
Within hours of his announcement, the UK government had placed SA back on its travel red list and many other countries followed suit. By the weekend, virtually all airlines had stopped accepting SA travellers on board their aircraft. SA had become almost totally isolated from the rest of the world outside Africa.
The local tourist industry, which had only just started recovering after losing almost an entire inbound tourist season last year, has been dealt a body blow by this variant discovery.
JSE-listed hospitality shares, such as City Lodge and Tsogo Sun, took a hammering the day after the announcement. There is a danger that, unless far greater clarity regarding the lethality and transmissibility of this virus emerges soon, the local tourist industry could be decimated by the discriminatory actions of much of the rest of the world.
If De Oliveira is “guilty” of anything, it is perhaps being naive about the political consequences of his actions. But scientists are purists — they pride themselves on being above politics and rightly so. In this regard, he was behaving the way any pure scientist would.
SA medical scientists have world-class reputations, earned over many decades in the fields of HIV, tuberculosis and other infectious diseases. No-one could seriously suggest that the information relating to the discovery of this new variant, now labelled Omicron, should have been suppressed.
But this is all water under the bridge now; the damage has been done. The following is required:
- Intense and comprehensive research into the lethality and transmissibility of the virus.
- A concerted lobbying effort by the department of international relations and co-operation and the tourist industry to have SA removed from the red list.
There is early evidence from Dr Angelique Coetzee, chair of the SA Medical Association, that the Omicron variant may be fairly benign. Coetzee has personal experience of patients who presented with mild symptoms that turned out to be associated with the Omicron variant. The sample sizes are too small to make conclusive findings, which is why intense and rapid further research into the variant’s impact is so necessary.
Hard-core bans
All interested parties should convince the UK and other countries that their actions in red-listing SA and the nine other Southern African countries are not only discriminatory but also unhelpful. The fact that a country happens to identify a new variant is no reason to red-list it.
Viruses have no respect for international borders. The Omicron variant has already been detected in Hong Kong, Belgium, Portugal, the UK and many other countries and within a week or two it is likely to have spread to many more.
Attempting to keep viruses out with hard-core travel bans is futile. By all means, institute more rigorous testing at borders but don’t keep some countries out while letting others come and go as they please. Such a policy is as illiberal as it is discriminatory.
SA’s travel industry was just getting up off the ground in October after it was removed from the UK’s red list. This latest development couldn’t have come at a worse time. The inbound tourist season runs from October to March and even if the UK gives a favourable ruling in three weeks, most of December will have passed by then.
Tourism contributes about 7% of SA’s GDP. It is a major foreign exchange earner and employs about 1.5-million people directly and indirectly. It can ill afford this type of disruption at the best of times, but in its current, weakened state it could turn into a mortal blow.
The SA government should be dissuaded from compounding the problem with internal knee-jerk reactions such as sealing provincial borders or clamping down on hospitality in an attempt to “contain” the virus.
• Gilmour is an independent investment analyst with Salmour Research.
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