The United States (US) government is expected to lift travel restrictions on eight southern African countries imposed last month, the White House said on Friday, reported Aljazeera.
The travel restrictions were imposed on several southern African nations, where the Omicron variant was first detected, amid concerns over the spread of the highly contagious COVID-19 variant.
In a tweet on Friday, the White House’s assistant press secretary, Kevin Munoz, said the travel restrictions would be lifted on December 31, in line with a recommendation from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Late last month, the Biden administration barred nearly all non-U.S. citizens who had recently been in South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Lesotho, Eswatini, Mozambique, and Malawi in a caution over the Omicron variant.
The variant was first identified by scientists in South Africa on November 24. The World Health Organization (WHO) then dubbed the strain as a variant of concern and warned it posed a very high risk.
“The restrictions gave us time to understand Omicron and we know our existing vaccines work against Omicron, [especially] boosted,” Munoz tweeted.
The World Health Organization (WHO) and other global health experts had criticized the travel bans, with United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres saying that restrictions that isolated any one country or region were not only deeply unfair and punitive but ineffective too.
Earlier this week, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said that Omicron has become the dominant coronavirus strain in the country, accounting for 73 percent of new infections.
On Tuesday, President Joe Biden pledged to provide additional resources to combat the spread of the virus in the country.
Biden said the government would buy 500 million rapid, at-home COVID-19 tests and make them available for free starting in January, while the federal government will continue to establish federal testing sites where needed.
