Botswana’s Health Minister Edwin Dikoloti on Sunday said it had detected a total of 19 cases of the new Covid variant, including the first four cases detected last week, reported Reuters.
“As of today we have recorded a total of 19 cases of the variant,” Botswana’s health minister said at a press conference in the capital Gaborone.
On Friday, the Botswana government had declared that the highly-mutated variant was detected on four foreign nationals who entered the country on November 7 on a diplomatic mission.
The announcement was made just a day after South African scientists identified the variant, resulting in a rush of travel bans on flights from the region.
Botswana’s Health Minister Dikoloti said most of the cases identified in the country came from abroad and many had attended the same event.
Botswana has refused to disclose details about the four diplomats, saying this would further “geo-politicize” the virus.
“We are concerned that there seem to have been attempts to stigmatize the country where it was detected,” Dikoloti said, referring to some media reports that described Omicron as the “Botswana variant”.
He said the detection of the cases was treated as origination.
Last week, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the new coronavirus variant to be “of concern” and named it Omicron.
The health body said the new variant had a large number of mutations, and early evidence suggested an increased reinfection risk. It was first reported to the WHO from South Africa on November 24 and has also been detected in Botswana, Belgium, Hong Kong, and Israel.
As a precautionary measure, many countries have imposed travel restrictions on South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Lesotho, Eswatini, Mozambique, and Malawi.
Botswana, which is home to about 2.4 million people, has reported around 194,900 coronavirus cases and 2,416 deaths so far. Only about 20 percent of Botswana’s population has been fully vaccinated.
