Botswana Health Minister Edwin Dikoloti told reporters Sunday the new coronavirus variant Omicron did not “originate” in Botswana but rather was first “detected” in a group of foreign diplomats who traveled to Botswana from an undisclosed location. Botswana health authorities on November 26 said they had detected Omicron “on four foreign nationals who entered Botswana on November 7 on a diplomatic mission,” Agence France-Presse (AFP) recalled on November 28. “Botswana has refused to disclose the provenance of the four diplomats, saying this would further ‘geo-politicize’ the virus,” AFP noted. “This variant was first detected in samples collected on 11 November 2021 in Botswana,” the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control noted of Omicron on November 26. Omicron is a new strain of SARS-CoV-2, which is a type of coronavirus that causes the disease known as “Covid-19,” or the Chinese coronavirus.
