Nigeria Bans UK, Canada, Saudi Arabia in Revenge for Omicron Travel Block

Nigeria’s aviation ministry announced plans on Sunday to ban incoming flights from the United Kingdom (U.K.), Canada, Saudi Arabia, and Argentina starting this week in retaliation for flight bans on Nigeria ordered by those countries in recent days to prevent the spread of Omicron, a new coronavirus variant.

“We have given our input as aviation that it is not acceptable by us and we recommend that those countries, Canada, UK, Saudi Arabia and Argentina be also put on red list, just like they did similarly to us,” Nigerian Aviation Minister Hadi Sirika said in a recorded voice statement obtained by Reuters on December 12.

“So, I am very sure between now and Monday [December 13] or perhaps Tuesday [December 14] maximum, all those countries will be put on the red list. Once they are on the red list, which means they are banned, their airlines will also be banned,” he added.

It remains unclear how long the nations targeted by Nigeria’s new travel ban will be prohibited from sending flights into the West African state.

Dozens of countries worldwide announced varying degrees of travel restrictions on flights from southern Africa and other African nations in late November after scientists in South Africa discovered Omicron on November 11. Many of the bans occurred before several European countries, most prominently the Netherlands, admitted later on that they had evidence of Omicron in their countries before South Africa alerted the World Health Organization (W.H.O.) to its existence. In Africa, the variant appears to have first begin spreading in Botswana, where the government blamed unspecified foreign diplomats for spreading it.

The European Union (E.U.), the United States, and Japan were among several states and regional blocs that imposed travel bans on flights from countries where Omicron was detected starting in mid-November. States in Africa that have recorded Omicron cases and are currently affected by travel prohibitions include Botswana, South Africa, Eswatini, Lesotho, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Malawi, Zambia, Angola, Nigeria, and Egypt.

Some states within Africa have restricted travel from the southern Africa region due to Omicron including Angola, Rwanda, Morocco, and Egypt.

Angola’s government announced on December 4 it would “close its borders with seven countries in southern Africa in an effort to prevent the spread of the new Omicron variant,” CNN Travel reported, citing Angolan state media.

“Angola’s border will be closed to South Africa, Botswana, Lesotho, Eswatini, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe … until January 5, 2022,” according to the report.

“Egypt says it has stopped direct flights from a number of southern African countries, including: South Africa, Lesotho, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Namibia and Eswatini,” CNN Travel relayed on December 4.

Morocco suspended “all incoming international flights for a two-week period beginning midnight November 29,” according to the news site.

The government of Rwanda announced on December 4 it would order “a temporary suspension of direct flights to and from southern Africa. Anyone arriving from affected countries will be required to quarantine for seven days,” CNN Travel reported.

The Omicron-based travel bans followed shortly after the World Health Organization (W.H.O.) designated the Chinese coronavirus strain a “variant of concern” on November 26.

“This decision was based on the evidence … that Omicron has several mutations that may have an impact on how it behaves, for example, on how easily it spreads or the severity of illness it causes,” the U.N. health body wrote in a November 28 press release.

The W.H.O. acknowledged at the time that more testing was necessary to fully understand Omicron’s rate of transmissibility and the level of illness it could cause. Subsequent studies and data have indicated Omicron is highly transmissible but less likely to cause severe illness and hospitalizations than previous strains of the disease.

Initial evidence suggests Omicron causes “a reduction in vaccine efficacy against infection and transmission,” the W.H.O. said in a technical brief published December 12.

“Given the current available data, it is likely that Omicron will outpace the Delta variant where community transmission occurs,” the brief stated.

Omicron infections documented so far indicate the variant causes “mild illness or asymptomatic cases,” according to the W.H.O.

Delta is currently the most prevalent strain of SARS-CoV-2 worldwide. SARS-CoV-2 is the name of the coronavirus that causes the disease known as “Covid-19,” or the Chinese coronavirus. Delta was first detected in India in December 2020 and is known for causing “breakthrough” cases, or infections of the Chinese coronavirus in people fully vaccinated against the disease.

A study published by Oxford University on December 11 demonstrated Omicron’s ability to cause such “breakthrough” infections.

“Researchers from the University of Oxford tested blood samples of people 28 days after their second dose of either the Oxford-AstraZeneca or Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine,” CNBC reported on December 13 after reviewing the paper.

“When omicron was introduced to those samples, scientists reported ‘a substantial fall’ in the neutralizing antibodies that fight off Covid compared to the immune responses seen against earlier variants,” the news site relayed.

Oxford University’s pre-print study, which has yet to be peer-reviewed, noted that some vaccine recipients in the experiment “failed to neutralize [the virus] at all.”

Initial data out of southern Africa suggests Omicron may be more contagious than Delta, which was known as the most transmissible of SARS-CoV-2 strains so far.

Initial data indicates Omicron is “efficiently transmitting, and probably more efficiently transmitting even than the Delta variant,” Michael Ryan, the executive director of the W.H.O.’s Health Emergencies Programme, told reporters at a December 8 press briefing.