The Omicron variant seems to be spreading a lot faster in the United States than any of the Southern Africa countries that were hit with travel bans by the White House.
According to data from Johns Hopkins Unviersity, the novel coronavirus cases in the United States are surging a lot quicker due to the Omicron variant.
This increases in Covid-19 infections is higher than the total number of cases that have been registered by South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Lesotho, Eswatini, Mozambique and Malawi.
All these countries were hit with a travel ban by the United States on November 27, 2021, according to a report by Reuters.
When the travel ban was imposed, the CDC Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said that no cases of Omicron had been identified in the United States.
According to the WorldOMeter, the United States recorded 55,279 Covid-19 cases compared to South Africa recording 3,782 infections as reported by the National Institute for Communicable Disease - by December 27, 2021.
It is important to note that the United States has over five-times the population of South Africa, but it is not relatively that hard to make out the infection per nation.
With the U.S. having 329 million people, the 55,279 gives them a 0.016 infection rate. South Africa with a 0.006.
The United States has a higher influx of unlimited budgets to spend on mitigating the spread of Covid, but clearly, they have not been in any luck.
The Omicron variant was identified in southern Africa in November, and soon after the announcement was made by those African countries, all first-world nations halted travel from citizens from those regions.
This decision was met with a lot of criticizm, and a couple of nations have since dropped this travel ban, with the United States removing its ban this coming Friday.
When the United States banned South Africa, not a single case of the Omicron variant was detected in the United States when the announcement was first made.
But within weeks, positive cases started popping up around the country, and so far, the Omicron variant appears not to be dropping anytime soon with infections.
- Additional sourcing from Reuters, NICD, CDC, WorldOMeter & Johns Hopkins.
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