Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia – The World Health Organization (WHO) lays out its key strategy to fight the transmission of the Omicron Variant in the world. The global agency called on countries to speed up their vaccinations to protect citizens from infection with the virus.
Takeshi Kasai, WHO’s western Pacific director, said this strategy was far more important than closing borders. In addition, he also appealed to residents to always comply with the applicable health protocols.
“One should not rely solely on border measures. The most important thing is to prepare for this variant with a high transmission potential. So far the available information indicates that we do not need to change our approach,” he said as proclaimed by Reuters on Friday (12/03/2021) .
Currently several countries have decided to lock their country from arrivals from South Africa and Botswana. This is because the two countries were the first centers of the spread of the new variant of Covid-19.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said this was regrettable. He argued that this closure could not be justified and gave a discriminatory impression.
“The only thing the travel ban will do is to further damage the economies of the affected countries and undermine their ability to respond to, and recover from, the pandemic,” he said.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has also officially listed Omicron as “variant of concern” or VOC (worrying variant). Omicron is reported to have more strains or mutations than Alpha, Beta and Delta variants and is considered highly infectious. There were 32 spike protein mutations carried by that variant.
(tps/tps)
– .
