The director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Anthony Fauci, spoke with Wendy Zukerman about his views on the travel ban on the latest episode of the "Science vs.
The US began to restrict travel from eight countries in southern Africa on Monday because of the new Omicron coronaviruses variant, which was labeled as a "variant of concern" by the World Health Organization.
The location of its initial detection doesn't necessarily mean that the variant originated in South Africa. The country has a robust system in place for tracking diseases like HIV, and it is in a good position to monitor variant of COVID-19.
When we heard about the situation in South Africa, we were blind. We didn't know what was going to happen. Fauci told Zukerman that one of the things they wanted to do was protect the American public.
Several countries, including the UK, US, Netherlands, and Belgium, have had cases of Omicron.
At the time of the ban, we did not know it was in other countries. Fauci said it looked like it was in South Africa. It's going to spread no matter what, because it's out there. I hope that we can pull back on that ban as quickly as possible.
Fauci maintained that if a ban had not been instituted, people would have been upset and critical of the administration.
