27th November, 2021 – The Social Democratic Party (SDP) calls for a measured and proportionate response to the new “Omicron” variant of the SARS‑CoV‑2 virus identified in South Africa and Botswana. We call for the government to enact strict travel bans against affected nations, while ruling out any renewal of domestic restrictions.
To protect Britain’s national recovery from the pandemic, we support the introduction of travel bans to South Africa, Namibia, Lesotho, Botswana, Eswatini and Zimbabwe. We also support more rigorous testing and quarantine procedures for all new arrivals into Britain, to prevent the importing of new cases from continental Europe or any other location.
SDP leader William Clouston says: “Given the relatively low lethality of COVID-19 among our largely vaccinated population, imposing new restrictions in light of this variant would be both unnecessary and disproportionate. Let’s maintain the vaccine booster rollout while keeping all schools, shops and places of work open. The social and economic damage of any new set of restrictions would far outweigh any benefit gained.”