US Banning Travel From Southern Africa to Buy Time to Learn About COVID-19 Variant: Fauci

The United States banned travel from southern African countries to try to delay the introduction of a newly detected virus variant, a public health official said on Saturday. “The issue of blocking travel from a given country is to just give us time to assess it better—that’s the reason for doing that, not any reason to panic,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, the longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said on the “Today” show. “We want to give us some time to really fill in the blanks of what we don’t know right now,” he added. President Joe Biden a day earlier ordered travel restricted from South Africa and seven other South African countries due to Omicron, a variant of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus. “I’ve decided that we’re going to be cautious,” Biden told reporters in Nantucket, Massachusetts, where he is vacationing. The decision followed a meeting …