The United States recommends against travel to eight African countries due to Ómicron, the new alternative to COVID-19

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and US Department of State They advised against traveling to eight countries in South Africa on Saturday After the White House announced new travel restrictions in response to a new variant of COVID-19.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has raised travel recommendations to “risk level four: very high” for South Africa, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Mozambique, Malawi, Lesotho, Eswatini and Botswana.Meanwhile, the State Department issued parallel “travel bans” notices on Saturday.

On Monday, the CDC lowered its COVID-19 travel warning for South Africa to “Level 1: Low”.

The US government’s chief medical advisor, Anthony Fauci, acknowledged on Saturday It is possible that a new variant of COVID-19 identified in South Africa has already made its way to the United States, but has not yet been detected.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s here and we haven’t figured it out yet. When you have a virus that is transmitted so easily and there are already cases in other countries as a result of travel, it will almost always end up everywhere,” Fauci said in a network interview. NBC.

Currently, the CDC confirms that they have not detected cases of the omicrón strain in the United States.

late on friday New York Gov. Cathy Hochhol, a Democrat, was the first to declare a state of emergency over the new alternative, which will take effect on December 3 and run through at least January 15.

With this action, Hochul seeks to increase the hospitals’ response capacity against covid-19 by prohibiting the implementation of procedures that are not necessary in certain circumstances and expanding the state government’s ability to procure emergency medical supplies.

The discovery of this new variant from South Africa is of concern to the scientific community because it presents a mixture of more than 30 mutations, although some of them have already been observed in other variants, such as beta, this is the first time they have been seen together.

Fears of this new strain have led many countries around the world, including those in the European Union, to shut down air traffic from southern African countries, particularly South Africa and Botswana.

The United States, Spain, France, Italy, the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands, Singapore, Canada, Austria and Israel are some of the countries that have temporarily suspended travel or announced that they will impose restrictions.

With information from Reuters and EFE

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