Contrary to the precautions that some European, African and Latin American countries have taken, Mexico will not close its borders before the incursion of the Omicron variant, said Hugo López-Gatell, undersecretary of Prevention and Health Promotion.
The official considered that so far there is no evidence on the risks of high virulence of the new strain of COVID-19, so the information that has emerged in recent days is disproportionate.
He argued that border closures do little to contain the disease and, on the contrary, affect the economic development of countries and the well-being of their inhabitants.
“Travel restrictions or border closures are not very useful measures; they affect the economy and the well-being of the people. The information disseminated on the risks of the new variant is disproportionate to what the existing scientific evidence shows ”. he pointed out.
López-Gatell explained that so far there is no extensive record that Ómicron has a higher transmissibility than other variants discovered such as Delta.
Read: New variant of Covid-19 worries scientists about its 30 mutations
He also denied having data that Ómicron is more resistant to the immune response from vaccines.
“Ómicron is the latest variant of concern for SARS-CoV-2; some data suggest that it has higher transmissibility than previous ones. It has not been shown to be more virulent or to evade the immune response induced by vaccines, ”he noted.
The detection of a new variant of the coronavirus in South Africa, identified as B.1.1.529, It worries the scientific community because it presents an amalgam of more than 30 mutations that, although some had already been observed in other variants, such as the beta, this is the first time they have been seen together.
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