When Omicron emerged on November 25th in South Africa of the worrying new variant of the sars-cov-2 virus, countries immediately began scrambling to tighten the rules on international travel. By November 29th suspected cases of Omicron had been identified in many countries in Europe and elsewhere. South Africans feel unjustly punished for their country’s scientific rigour but we know that Mutations allow new forms of the virus to better bind to human cells . What lessons can we learnt from the new Variant about world economies ?

