International Air Transport Association director general Willie Walsh criticized governments on Wednesday for the omicron-related border restrictions. He also questioned virus testing protocols and challenged governments to follow “data and science” when making decisions.
He said that “By hammering the airline industry they think they are sending a message to the wider population to follow their message”.
Walsh predicts that the “knee-jerk” border restrictions will ease soon. However, he also believes that it is too early to say whether it will affect holiday travel. However, Walsh thinks that the new variant isn’t going to affect the IATA forecasts. IATA believes that air travel will return to its pre-pandemic levels by 2024.
For Walsh, governments “can’t shut down everything when a new variant appears”. He even said that hasty travel restrictions penalized southern African countries for reporting the new variant. He explained that “closing your borders after the virus is in your country is not going to achieve anything”.
Aside from border restrictions, Walsh also said that authorities should look into the prices of the COVID19 tests. Britain already announced in August that it is going to penalize companies if they break consumer laws.
He said that “I hope governments and competition regulators step in and stop consumers being ripped off”. Walsh also added that “I do think we need to understand how that has happened and where all the money (has) gone”.
Walsh thinks that the restrictions and the testing protocols are “creating a lot of confusion in the market”.
Unfortunately, health experts still don’t know everything about the new variant. CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said that researchers are “still working to understand the severity of omicron as well as how it responds to therapeutics and vaccines”.
Walensky also said that the “same measures will at least, in part, provide some protection against omicron”. White House COVID19 Response Coordinator Jeff Zients announced that vaccinations surged over the last week. 12.5 million shots were administered—7 million of which were booster shots. He said that “That’s the highest weekly total number of shots since May”.
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