A Thailand newspaper has been officially reprimanded over the headline of a news report about the government’s efforts to trace 783 travellers who have arrived from various African countries since November 15 and test them for the Omicron variant of coronavirus. Thailand’s Centre for COVID-19 Situation Administration slammed the Bangkok Post’s headline “Government hunts for African visitors” on its front page and website as “poor choice of words” that should prompt the editors to “take good note of the negative feedback it has already elicited.” 

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“Let me state clearly and unequivocally that this headline does not in any way reflect the government’s policy and or approach nor does it characterise any of the procedures the government has put in place thus far,” said a spokeswoman for the government agency tasked with managing Thailand’s Covid-19 response in a press conference on Friday, BBC reported.

The spokeswoman did not mention the paper by name, but social media posts show the Bangkok Post had run the headline on its front page on the morning of December 2.

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The article also appeared on the paper’s website, though the headline had been changed to “searched for” instead of “hunted”.

First detected in South Africa in November, Omicron has been listed as a “variant of concern” by the World Health Organization (WHO) which says a high number of mutations make the strain potentially more transmissible and capable of evading immunity offered by vaccines or previous infections.

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Omicron’s emergence in southern Africa has prompted countries to impose travel restrictions on arrivals from Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe.

Thailand has not reported any cases of Omicron so far. The WHO on Friday urged Asia-Pacific countries to boost healthcare capacity and fully vaccinate their people to prepare for a surge in COVID-19 cases due to the variant.