The Botswana government has changed its national lockdown regulations and extended the times and the duration of the curfew restrictions following the discovery of a new and more transmissible strain of Covid-19. The Minister of Health and Wellness Edwin Dikoloti made the announcement to say that the curfew, enacted by the President Mokgweetsi Masisi on the 23rd of December, will continue to be enforced between 8 PM and 4 AM daily until the 31st of January. Botswana has recorded more than 14,805 cases of Covid-19 and 42 deaths. 892 Botswanans have already been caught violating the curfew restrictions as of December 28th.
Reading this report reminded me of the recent outbreak of the United Kingdom, which mentioned a new strain of the coronavirus that was significantly more transmissible than the strain of coronavirus that we know in the United States. It evidently shows how much more transmissible this new strain of coronavirus is to already see an African country suffering from the new strain after the reports of the strain in the United Kingdom. It also makes me wonder if it necessarily came from the United Kingdom, or maybe this new strain will appear everywhere as the possibility that the coronavirus will mutate into this more transmissible form and render our newly produced vaccine worthless.
In class, we are currently discussing geopolitics and how a countries location provides significant advantages or disadvantage. Botswana and other African nations aren’t too far from the United Kingdom, as well as the United Kingdom having it’s fingers in a lot of pies in Africa for a very long time, so it is not implausible for the new strain to have spread to a south African nation like Botswana. In the United Kingdom, a swarm of people tried to flee the country after the new lockdown regulations and foreign policies to close borders were planned to be put in place, allowing someone asymptomatic to flee the UK.