The President of the United States, Joe Biden, signed this Tuesday (28) an order that will end in three days the restrictions on passengers coming from South Africa and seven other countries in the south of the African continent.
The measures took effect on November 29, in an attempt to prevent the arrival and expansion of the omicron variant of the new coronavirus, identified for the first time in the region.
“The travel restrictions imposed by the previous order are no longer necessary to protect public health,” said the president, who signed the new text at his Delaware home, where he celebrated Christmas with his family.
The measure affected South Africa, Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, Malawi, Mozambique, Essuatini and Zimbabwe, preventing access to any non-US citizens who had been in these countries 14 days before disembarking in the US.
The World Health Organization (WHO) came to criticize the restriction, imposed by the American government and several other nations, for “punishing” those who identified the new variant.
The first case of omicron in the United States was detected on December 1, in California, and, according to the Centers for Disease Control of the country (CDC), the variant is already dominant, surpassing the delta.
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