Africa-Press – Namibia. NAMIBIA is emerging from the international health and economic Covid-19 stranglehold, with the United States of America (USA) lifting travel restrictions to the country and seven other Southern African nations on New Year’s Eve.
The opening of borders is extremely advantageous to Namibia as the gateway to landlocked central-African countries and will not only benefit tourism as one of the top ten world travel destinations, but the cross-border trade in general.
The Biden decision follows after Great Britain earlier with various European Union countries lifted travel restrictions to and from Namibia and other Southern African destinations as well.
The President, Dr Hage Geingob, strongly spoke out at the United Nations General Assembly and various meetings, in what he termed “vaccine discrimination” against developing nations, and condemned the “hasty” travel ban imposed after the discovery of the Omicron variant by South African scientists.
Since the Geingob intervention at various meetings in the USA, including a conference with Joe Biden participating, various agencies and countries have imposed a quota from their own manufacturers to be set aside for less developed countries.
Namibia so far has enough vaccine and booster shots available and the Covid-19 response of Namibia is recommended to countries that do not yet have a programme of their own in place.
“Instead of being congratulated for the discovery and transparent announcement, Southern Africa got punished,” Geingob pointed out.
The influential Washington Post quoted the White House Chief coronavirus adviser, Dr Anthony Fauci, saying: “We all feel very badly about the hardship that might have been put upon not only South Africa, but other African countries”, adding that the ban was imposed “at a time when we were really in the dark about Omicron.”
Doctors and scientists in South Africa say that infections from Omicron only cause mild illness, a fact that is confirmed by patients in Namibia where hospitalisation is not as high as during the Delta variant, although Omicron proved highly infectious and is spreading rapidly.
Traditional Chiefs, Kings and Queens of the Northern Area lauded the measures of the Namibian government and singled out Dr Geingob and the Minister of Health, Dr Kalumbi Shangula, for their immense hard work to keep Namibia’s “Health and Wealth” on top of the agenda, despite challenges of the economy and the festive season pressures.
“Dr Shangula is the face of a hands-on Minister of Health and his daily updates are testament to that, while the sometimes unpopular, but hard decisions, are taken by the President with a great understanding of the challenges of communities,” they said.
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