The Southern African Development Community (SADC) has learned with great concern and disappointment about the rushed decision taken by some countries, essentially in Europe and North America to ban travel to and from eight Southern African Countries, including Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe.
While we recognise the legitimate principle for each country to protect its population and minimize the risk of importation of new variants of COVID-19, we condemn the knee jerk reaction that followed South Africa's ground breaking discovery of the new variant. The Omicron variant of the COVID-19 virus has so far been reported in 23 countries around the world, just under 2 weeks after the announcement by the Republic of South Africa.
