Just a few days I put up an article talking about how tourism could start up again particularly in places like Africa.
It would appear that the omicron variant of Covid is going to make that sound very premature.
Pfizer is predicting boosters will protect populations from this new variant within 100 days.
Assuming that it doesn’t start spreading Europe out of control, this would allow any traveller to be vaccinated before they leave.
My family are booked to go to the Kruger national park in South Africa next August. I am confident that we will still go -assuming restrictions lift as things improve. Unfortunate comments from health representatives in South Africa about premature banning of travel do seem rather foolish, however in terms of wealth South Africa is on different category to pretty much all of the countries in Africa and are likely to be able to get a grip on this relatively rapidly. While it is true that South Africa has had more cases of covid than anywhere else on the continent, their numbers of dramatically lower than the UK’s (and virtually all other European Nations).
In short, well this is an unfortunate second blow on the travel industry in southern Africa my hope is that it will be short enough lived that it will do far less damage to the natural world in this part of Africa than the first one did.