Excellent Science Leads to Isolation
Excellent science should be incentivized
South Africa reported the unknown strain to W.H.O — Omicron, and South Africa did the right thing by notifying WHO so other countries could be on guard. South Africa is no China.
The travel ban
And the new variant has rattled other countries, but in the panic to protect themselves, they have lost sight of the long-term effects of their sanctioning travel from or to South Africa. I mean, South Africa is being punished for its good behaviour. The U.K and the U.S. have limited travel from and to South Africa.
Economy taking a beating
The South African economy has been battered like other economies due to COVID, and the ban only compounds the economic woes for the country. The already faltering tourism industry is further smothered by the fresh travel restrictions.
Travel and Tourism form 7% of South Africa’s GDP. It provides around 1.5 million jobs in a country where the unemployment rate is 34.4%.
How effective are travel bans?
On Sunday, the World Health Organization’s regional office for Africa issued a statement saying: “Travel restrictions may play a role in slightly reducing the spread of Covid-19 but place a heavy burden on lives and livelihoods. If restrictions are implemented, they should not be unnecessarily invasive or intrusive, and should be scientifically based.”
As omicron cases have started coming from different corners of the globe, travel restrictions aren’t much effective, especially when the variant has already spread. We will be naive to believe that South Africa tracked the patient-zero infected with omicron variant and isolated the person before the virus spread.
We are punishing South Africa for
- Having a robust screening and advanced genome technology
- Having identified a new variant quickly
We should be rewarding countries for prompt reporting of new variants not punishing them.
What can we do?
We can have a common fund that we can use to reward countries for promptly detecting and reporting new variants. Incentivising countries to report may be a good idea as delays in reporting will spread the virus across the globe, which will cost more than rewarding countries for a vigilant tracking system.
But the next question is what will be the rules for giving the prize? Will the developed countries be eligible for the prize? What should be the amount?’
How do we ensure that countries don’t deliberately let the virus spread and mutate in their pursuit to report new variants and get the award?
At the least, the amount should be big enough to incentivise a county to report the variant. As this article puts it, “The gross domestic product of the planet is around $100 trillion a year. So it would be worthwhile to give out a reward of $100 billion if it could help reduce the global damage from Covid-19 even by 0.1 percent.”
But “ Excellent science should be applauded and not punished.”
