A new poll shows a vast majority of people in the United States support President Joe Biden’s ban on travel imposed on eight countries in southern Africa, which the United Nations has denounced as “travel apartheid.”
According to the new Hill-HarrisX poll, released on Tuesday, 71 percent of registered voters said they approve of the Biden administration’s decision to restrict travelers from the African countries, while 29 percent of respondents said they disapprove.
Seventy-eight percent of Republicans, 88 percent of Democrats, and 82 percent of independents support Biden’s travel ban to contain the highly contagious omicron variant of coronavirus.
The Biden administration implemented the ban to restrict travel from South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Lesotho, Eswatini, Mozambique, and Malawi.
The administration said that the measure was taken out of an abundance of caution in light of the new variant.
The decision sparked an immediate backlash from the international community and public health experts, who say it is ineffective and punitive against African countries.
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres called the US response “travel apartheid.”
He said that travel restrictions imposed over COVID-19 that isolate any one country or region as “not only deeply unfair and punitive – they are ineffective.”
Guterres stated that the only way to reduce the risk of transmission while allowing for travel and economic engagement was to repeatedly test travelers, “together with other appropriate and truly effective measures,” according to Reuters.
World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Wednesday said it was “deeply concerning” that African countries are being “penalized” with travel restrictions after detecting and reporting the omicron variant.
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Republican Senator Rand Paul on Sunday slammed Dr. Anthony Fauci’s “authoritarianism” and American travel restrictions on the African countries, saying that “the travel bans aren’t going to work” to prevent the variant from spreading.
He also said that “restrictions on our liberties” were not science-based, but “based on whims.”
Dr. Fauci has said the United States will “hopefully” be able to lift its travel ban on African countries “in a quite reasonable period of time.”
In an interview with CNN last week, Fauci said that the US was re-evaluating the travel ban, a week after he said the ban would give the US time to prepare for the highly contagious omicron variant of coronavirus.
The White House chief medical adviser said some early data about the omicron data is “a bit encouraging,” and added that now the travel ban could be lifted.
