The U.S. will restrict travel from South Africa and seven other countries, effective Monday — a response to the emerging and newly-named 'Omicron' variant of Covid-19, President Joe Biden said Friday.
and other countries already had announced that they were restricting travel from the African continent.
“We don't know very much about this yet,” Maria Van Kerkhove, an infectious disease epidemiologist and the WHO’s Covid-19 technical lead said in a. “What we do know is that this variant has a large number of mutations. The concern is that when you have so many mutations it can have an impact on how the virus behaves.”
Biden directed part of his Friday statement to the "world community," asserting that the pandemic will not end "until we have global vaccinations." "The United States has already donated more vaccines to other countries than every other country combined," Biden added. "It is time for other countries to match America’s speed and generosity."
Our goal is to create a safe and engaging place for users to connect over interests and passions. In order to improve our community experience, we are temporarily suspending article commentingA World Health Organization panel named the variant “omicron” and classified it as a highly transmissible virus of concern, the same category that includes the predominant delta variant, which is still a scourge driving higher cases of sickness and death in Europe and parts of the United States.
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