On November 22, 2021, South Africa's world-class doctors and scientists found a new COVID variant Omicron. Omicron is not a variant directly linked to Delta, instead, it might have been circulating in areas with bad genomic surveillance. 

The world should be grateful to the scientists of South Africa for finding this so we can try to control it. Instead, on November 26, 2021, President Biden announced a travel ban to take place on November 30, 2021. 

That travel ban affects these countries: South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Lesotho, Eswatini, Mozambique, and Malawi. So far only two of them have had any cases of Omicron that are known. 

These are the countries so far that have found cases of Omicron but there are no travel restrictions in place: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, China, Czechia, Denmark, Germany, Israel, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, UK.

On November 30, 2021, it was reported that the Netherlands found cases of Omicron 5 days before the alarm was set by South Africa.

This is clear that the travel ban is not in place for our safety. This ban only punishes a country for trying to help the rest of the world and to let the world know of this strain.

We call for President Biden and his administration to lift the travel ban on South African countries and instead put in testing for travelers from all countries before any flight and at arrival.