With the cases of the Omicron variant increasing globally despite vaccine rollouts and nationwide restrictions to contain its spread, The Fatboy Show Presenter Olive Najjuma has urged that restrictions have become more needless.
This was today morning as Olive and her Co-host Fatboy talked about the Kenyan truck drivers who were protesting against the $30 Covid-19 test required for each one of them entering Uganda, irrespective of if they arrived from Kenya with negative results.
According to the Presenters, the move aside from being unsustainable in halting the spread of Covid-19, may portray Uganda as a less appealing business partner to Kenyan traders who could opt to transact business with other countries.
Olive additionally said that truck drivers are concerned that Kenyan traders might change their transport passage to South Sudan where construction of a route is already ongoing.
“I think governments need to adopt what Boris Johnson has done in the UK. He decided that since Omicron spreads like wildfire and one can know how it spreads, then there's really no point in locking up countries and putting up restrictions,” she said.
She added that one technocrat on Sky news explained that booster shots last only to 8-12 weeks after which one has to take another shot, making the vaccines unreliable and mandates pointless.
However, Fatboy wondered why the Prime Minister had just come to this realization yet it was the initial solution, with Olive responding that some countries like Israel were still emphatic on vaccination and booster shots despite the rise in infections.
Fatboy added, “Israel got done with double vaccination and was among the first countries to do booster shots. Now, they're engaging in the 4th booster shot campaign and despite this, Covid cases in the country have reached a new record high of 16,000 infections. It seems there’s no way of stopping this Omicron.”
He further said that there has to be a practical solution in dealing with the Covid-19 situation unlike measures that rather destroy or jeopardize the country’s economy.
“It's almost like fire fighting, like we are running around like headless chickens confused at what we are doing and at the end of the day, we are damaging our economic prospects yet we've already lost 2 years of economic growth because of lockdown restriction policies. And when we look back, nothing was accomplished and it was all for nothing,” he argued.
The Fatboy show is hosted by James Onen aka Fatboy, Olive, Sarah and Lesham every weekday from 6am to 10am on RX Radio.