President furious with Europe re: omicron; "Virus had not originated in our country"

President furious with Europe re: omicron; "Virus had not originated in our country"

Just to recall, South Africa reported to the WHO that a new strain of coronavirus has been identified, which experts assumed could be the worst so far. An emergency session of the WHO was convened, which finally announced today the predictions about the consequences that this strain could have on the previous pandemic.

Also, at the moment when the new strain was detected, one by one, European countries started banning flights from those parts of the world where that strain was identified. And so there was panic at the international level. People were locked up for hours on planes, waiting to see what would happen to them.

On the other side of the ocean, on Sunday at eight o'clock, the President of the Republic of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa, addressed the nation in relation to the new strain of the omicron virus. He was quite angry with the world community because of the way it reacted to the appearance of a new variant of the virus.

Croatian citizen Vani Reljic, who has lived in Pretoria, the capital of South Africa, for more than 20 years, told Croatian media that Ramaphosa pointed out during his address that such a reaction of many countries is contrary to the declaration signed in Rome last month, which stated to be cautious about the situation in less developed countries.

He also said that nothing is known for sure about this new type of virus, except that it was first discovered in Botswana, and not in the Republic of South Africa, which only wanted to be transparent, so it immediately reported it, which has now turned against it.

He is especially indignant, says Reljić, because many world countries, especially European ones, immediately banned travel to the Republic of South Africa, which he considers unfounded because it is not yet known for sure how this new strain of the virus reacts or behaves.

"What is known is that more young people are infected and that the symptoms are not very severe. No one is hospitalized and the infected are mostly treated at home. That is why the president asked the countries to immediately withdraw the decision to ban travel," she said.

According to her, since the symptoms are not life-threatening, for now in the Republic of South Africa they do not know how to proceed, so apart from the locking, which is in force in that country, there are no new restrictions related to the appearance of omicron.

In South Africa, curfew is in force from midnight to 4 a.m. and it is mandatory to wear masks, points out the Croatian citizen who lives there and adds that the Minister of Health Joe Phaahla also addressed the population there, calling the reaction of the international community excessive, because "the consequences of this virus is not so terrible, and the damage to the economy will be huge". Reljic pointed out, describing the situation in the Republic of South Africa, that the number of infected people increased from 2 to 9 percent in a short time, which is quite a high percentage. In that country, 24 percent of the adult population was vaccinated with both doses, and about 40 percent with one dose of the coronavirus vaccine.

Authorities in South Africa are also calling for as many people as possible to be vaccinated, although it is not known how effective the vaccine is for the new strain. The so-called booster dose, first for the elderly, and the introduction of mandatory vaccination is also mentioned.