Newtravel restrictions to the US kicked inovernight, barring travelers from eight countries in southern Africa.
The US is among agrowing list of countriesto put travel restrictions in place due to concerns over omicron.
On Monday, Japan joined Israel and Morocco inbarring all foreign travelers.
It’s unclear how long the travel restrictions will be in place.
His proclamation took effect at 9:01 p.m. PT Sunday/12:01 a.m. Scientists are concerned about it because of its high number of mutations.
Their worry is that vaccines designed to target previous COVID-19 variants may be less effective.
But vaccination rates vary widely around the globe and in individual nations.
COVID-19 constantly mutates, and many of those mutationsdon’t substantially affect the virus.
“What we do know is that this variant has a large number of mutations.
“It will take a few weeks for us to understand what impact this variant will have.”
Dubai said it’ll restrict entrance to travelers from those countries starting Monday.
“We expect more data from the laboratory tests in two weeks at the latest.
An escape variant would resist the targeted immune response because of vaccination.
That a new variant has emerged in Africa comes as little surprise to many epidemiologists.
Viruses, like the one that causes COVID, mutate during replication.
South Africa is the richest country in Africa, yet only has adouble vaccination rate of around 23%.
CNET’s Carrie Mihalcik contributed to this report.
