Against the Omicron variant, is border closure effective?

Article by L’Express, published by Cécile de Sèze on November 28, 2021

The new variant worries the authorities, prompting several countries to announce the closure of their borders. Its characteristics are however still unknown.

It's a race between Homo sapiens and a virus like we've never seen it before," summarizes Hervé Fleury, virologist and professor emeritus at the CNRS and the University of Bordeaux, and member of Ventum’s Scientific Board. After the Alpha variants, Beta, Gama, Delta... Here is the Omicron variant, with a record number of 32 mutations in its Spike protein. Two years after the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, it seems that the virus is continuing its progression and its mutations , making the fight against the health crisis difficult.

The Omicron variant has already been detected in many countries around the world, and particularly in Europe where Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, the United Kingdom or even Italy and the Czech Republic, have announced the presence of cases on their soil. This Sunday, the Minister of Health Olivier Véran in turn estimated that cases could be found in France. "To date, there has not yet been an identification of this type of variant on the national territory, but it is very probably a question of hours," declared the minister at the end of a visit. in a Parisian vaccination center.

Something to worry about, a few weeks before the end of the year holidays and while a fifth wave is sweeping over Europe, and therefore France. However, the strategy to fight against the epidemic will not be revised because, for the minister, this detection "does not impact the profile of the epidemic wave that we know. It is a wave which is already linked to a very variant. contagious, the Delta variant."

But faced with the threat of Omicron's spread, the European Union has recommended suspending all travel from South Africa and six other countries in the region. Several countries then announced the closure of their borders with South Africa and its neighbors in an attempt to control the entry of the variant into the territory. This is particularly the case for the United States, Canada, Brazil, the United Kingdom, France, Italy and even Switzerland. As for Israel, the country has taken the drastic decision to close its borders to all foreign nationals.