Omicron discovery flip-flop lands UK health secretary in a political pickle

First he publicly praised SA for alerting the world about the Omicron variant, but UK health secretary Sajid Javid is taking flak for his abrupt about-turn after he publicly declared the UK “alerted the world to the threat” posed by the new Covid-19 strain. 

Speaking during a UK parliamentary sitting earlier this week, Javid said: “May I remind the honourable gentleman that it was the UK that alerted the world to the threat of Omicron. There is no country better prepared if you look at how quickly and swiftly the UK reacted, for example, with the international restrictions and information we shared to the world on vaccines.”

Javid was providing a response regarding the UK’s handling of the Omicron variant after receiving criticism from a fellow MP, reported the Express.

In defence of his office, Javid said: “There are going to be variants of Covid-19, as the honourable gentleman says, for many years, and there have been many hundreds of variants. There is no country in the world that is better at surveillance of those variants.”

Prof Tulio de Oliveira, head of the KwaZulu-Natal Research Innovation and Sequencing Platform (Krisp), responded to footage of the claim with a tweet describing it as “absolute nonsense”.

Javid’s “hijacking” of Africa’s shine for discovering the new variant came not long after he held a virtual conversation with SA health minister Joe Phaahla and hailed the country for its strides in the fight against the pandemic and “rapidly alerting the world to Omicron”.

Taking to Twitter, Javid had said: “Excellent to speak to Dr Joe Phaahla, my counterpart in SA, today to express my thanks for rapidly alerting the world to Omicron. The UK is working closely with our South African friends to share any new information on Omicron.”

The scientist who first detected the Omicron variant was Sikhulile Moyo, director of the Botswana Harvard HIV Reference Laboratory and a research fellow at Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health. 

When Moyo first sequenced the sample, taken on November 11 from foreign diplomats who had travelled together to Botswana, the variant it most closely resembled was B.1.1.263. That variant is known as the UAE lineage and was first detected in early April 2020.

When he looked more closely at B.1.1.263, he saw that strain had less mutations and ruled out what he was seeing as being the same. After asking for more information from Botswana’s health department about the people from whom the positive samples had been taken, Moyo and his team deposited their findings into an international database on November 23.

A few hours later, a separate group in SA reported similar findings, followed by another group in Hong Kong that deposited a partial genome.

The UK had thrown its support behind SA, saying its scientists would continue to share information to better understand the variant. 

While the UK may have not have been first to raise the alarm on Omicron, the country did record the first death linked to the Omicron variant. There were no details provided about the victim, except that he died after being diagnosed in hospital. It was not clear if the patient had been vaccinated or had underlying health issues.

Deaths from Omicron may have occurred in other countries but none have been publicly confirmed outside Britain.

On Monday, Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson said at least one person had died in the UK after contracting the Omicron variant.

The British government, which placed 11 southern African countries on its travel red list in late November, barring entry from these countries, has reversed that decision.

In the same sitting this week, Javid said: “Now that there is community transmission of Omicron in the UK and Omicron has spread so widely across the world, the travel red list is less effective in slowing the incursion of Omicron from abroad. 

“While we will maintain our temporary testing measures for international travel, we will be removing all 11 countries from the travel red list effective from 4am [on Wednesday].”

The move to remove SA from the red list has been welcomed. 

TimesLIVE