07 Dec 2021

President Dr Mokgweetsi Masisi says countries which have imposed a travel ban on Botswana and other southern African countries following the detection of the latest COVID-19 variant, Omicron, could have considered other measures.

“You can increase vigilance and strictness of testing, isolating and quarantining to allow for trade and movement of persons while managing this pandemic,” he said in a televised interview with global newscaster BBC yesterday.

Calling the travel ban by countries such as the US, UK, Canada, European Union states, some Arab League nations and India harsh and unfair, President Masisi said Botswana had expected responsible and not punitive measures after alerting the world to the existence of a new COVID-19 variant.

 “For the reason that we were the first to notify the world of the existence of this new variant, we expected as a developing nation to be commended for brilliant work of our scientists and for alerting everyone else early,” the President said.

He said the travel ban had a negative effect on the country’s economy, which was largely driven by diamond mining and tourism.

“These two are correlated in the sense that travel to the destination site of tourists, including travel to procure the diamonds is going to be affected negatively and with these two affected, the Botswana economy is throttled,” he said.

 President Masisi said with coronavirus consistently mutating, the world needed to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic as a collective and Botswana would continue to play its part.

While acknowledging that the country was resource-constrained, he said Botswana pursued testing and tracing as well as genome sequencing of each COVID-19 positive case at a huge cost.

“I went to our scientists, gave them a pep talk and encouraged them. The Botswana government stands resolutely behind them and we will reward and motivate them to do the correct thing ethically and scientifically, it is our contribution to global health, peace and stability,” he said.

In addition, President Masisi said Omicron could not have originated in Botswana since the first positive cases identified were of people who had briefly visited he country.

“It was discovered among persons who had recently arrived and because of our very aggressive testing it had not been picked up among the population here. It stands to logic that it may have come in, but where precisely it originates, I don’t think anyone knows,” he said.

The President  said while Botswana encouraged vaccine uptake among citizens, the country would not enforce mandatory vaccination.

“We do not intend to impose vaccination. People have enshrined in the constitution fundamental freedoms,” the President stated.

Regarding usage of COVID-19 relief funds, President Masisi said the country had an independent auditing system for examining public finances utilisation and that a report was recently published.BOPA