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Marc Mendelson and colleagues1 argue strongly against travel bans to contain newly recognised SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern. We would like to add another aspect: ignoring countries with poor surveillance systems. South Africa has good epidemiological and genomic surveillance, but many other countries do not. Within 2 days of return to South Africa from Tanzania in January, 2021, a traveller developed clinical symptoms and tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 by PCR. Sequencing using published methods2 identified the virus as the beta variant of concern,3 highly likely to have been acquired in Tanzania during its second epidemic wave.4 This case highlights the potential for a variant of concern to be introduced from a country that had not reported its presence. Until Dec 23, 2021, Tanzania has not uploaded a single SARS-CoV-2 genetic sequence to GISAID. In fact, Tanzania had not been reporting COVID-19 case numbers at all between May, 2020, and July, 2021, linked to a denialist official stance.4 Tanzania's second wave in early 2021 might have been linked to the beta variant with the traveller acting as a sentinel.5 Although several countries in southern Africa were listed as so-called areas of variants of concern by Germany in early 2021, Tanzania remained a so-called risk area until being declared a high incidence area from mid-March, 2021. Perceived as punishment for countries conducting genomic surveillance and reporting openly, the illogical application of travel bans could act as a deterrent to conducting genomic surveillance and, thus, foil their very objective.

Tanzania's second wave in early 2021 might have been linked to the beta variant with the traveller acting as a sentinel.5 Although several countries in southern Africa were listed as so-called areas of variants of concern by Germany in early 2021, Tanzania remained a so-called risk area until being declared a high incidence area from mid-March, 2021. Perceived as punishment for countries conducting genomic surveillance and reporting openly, the illogical application of travel bans could act as a deterrent to conducting genomic surveillance and, thus, foil their very objective. For more on GISAID see https://www.gisaid.org For more on GISAID see https://www.gisaid.org