Travel bans and restrictions enacted by the United States over the last two years initially came with political backlash.
But in hindsight, as the COVID-19 pandemic grew worse and worse, the Trump Administration's initial ban early last year proved correct to help slow the spread of the virus.
And, now, in retrospect, it appears the Biden Administration's similar decision to restrict travel from several southern African countries last month is also proving to be prescient.
COVID-19 cases in South Africa alone, the biggest of the nine countries restricted from traveling to the U.S., have quadrupled in less than a week, according to CNN.
South Africa reported 16,055 new COVID-19 cases on Friday, December 3, nearly four times the number of cases the country reported on Tuesday, November 30.
It was in South Africa where the new Omicron variant of the virus was first discovered, leading the White House to impose the travel sanctions.
"Today the (National Institute for Communicable Diseases) reports 16,055 new COVID-19 cases that have been identified in South Africa, which brings the total number of laboratory-confirmed cases to 3,004,203. This increase represents a 24.3 percent positivity rate," the government said Friday in a statement.
Some of those cases were people who already contracted COVID-19.
"Previous infection used to protect against Delta (variant), but now with Omicron that doesn't seem to be the case," Professor Anne von Gottberg, a microbiologist from the country's National Institute for Communicable Diseases, said during a news conference last week about the surge in cases. "We monitored ... reinfections for the Beta and the for the Delta wave, and we didn't see an increase in reinfections over and above what we expect when the force of infection changes, when the wave stops. However, we are seeing an increase for Omicron."
The World Health Organization previously said the new round of travel bans were not necessary, and South Africa has bemoaned the effects of the restrictions on tourism to the country.
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