US plans to lift bans on travel from African nations

Botswana, Lesotho, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Eswatini, Mozambique and Malawi were the countries affected by the Biden travel ban, which was ostensibly instituted due to fears over the new Omicron variant of COVID 19, which more and more has been shown to be much less of a threat to public health than previous iterations of the virus.

According to Reuters, "US public health agencies had recommended lifting the travel restrictions because retaining them would have not a significant impact on U.S. cases given the widespread current US transmission, confidence that an Omicron-specific vaccine would not be necessary and that existing vaccines and booster shots are highly effective."

"This travel pause has served its purpose. It bought time to understand the science, it gave time to analyze the variant," an anonymous source told Reuters.

"This was not meant to keep Omicron out. We knew we couldn't do that. The point was to reduce the number of cases coming in - in those early days and weeks," the unnamed official went on, emphasizing that the restrictions were always meant to be temporary in nature.