Md Rahmat Ali Sagor

South Africa being the worst pandemic hit country in Africa with more than 2.95 million cases and 89,783 deaths detected a new strain of Covid-19 denoted Omicron which WHO termed a "variant of concern" acknowledging its more transmissibility than all other previous ones. Although Israel and Belgium have also detected the cases of Omicron, South Africa is being punished for the discovery of the newest variant first by banning flights from the southern parts of Africa. Since the aforementioned variant was detected in other parts of the world without any linkage to South Africa, it is yet bearing the brunt though it being backed up by world-class scientific community and advanced genomic sequencing technology. The South African Government urged their global partners to discern their capacity to test and ramped-up vaccination programme and to appreciate excellent science rather than punishment.