Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Joe Biden’s top medical advisor, on Sunday said the government is reviewing its travel ban on South Africa and numerous African countries, a policy that has sparked worldwide criticism.
Speaking to CNN’s Jake Tapper, who noted the ban applies to African countries but not to the three dozen or so other countries where the so-called Omicron variant is present, Fauci said he hopes to see the ban lifted “within a reasonable amount of time.”
“Jake, that ban was done at a time when we were really in the dark,” Fauci explained. “We had no idea what was going on except this seemed to have been an explosion of cases in South Africa.”
Fauci continued his discussion on the ban, passed last month on fears of the new COVID-19 variant:
“When the ban was put on, it was put to give us time to figure out what’s going on. Now, as you mentioned, as we get more and more information about cases in our own country and worldwide, we are looking at that very carefully on a daily basis. Hopefully, we will lift that ban within a reasonable period of time. We all feel very badly about the hardship that that might have put upon not only South Africa but the other African countries. For that reason, on a daily basis, we are reevaluating that policy.”