The South African leader said it would take Trump "listening to the voices of South Africans" to change his view.
"Unvaccinated people in South Africa are going to the hospital, but they are not suffering a severe disease. They are not requiring oxygen. Their hospitals stay is about a third as long as it was with delta," a doctor with Gladstone Institutes tells ABC7.
Los Angeles County health officials on Thursday confirmed the region's first case of the omicron COVID-19 variant. The county health department says the person is fully vaccinated.
"If it's going to be really transmissible a travel ban isn't really going to stop what is going to happen naturally. By the time you recognize something it's probably already here," said Dr. Peter Chin-Hong.
"It's very likely that no matter what we do it, it will spread to other countries," a UCSF doctor said. In South Africa, where it originated, COVID cases have jumped from a steady 200 per day to 2,000. The next big question is, how effective will the vaccine be against this variant?
The C.1.2 variant identified in South Africa is raising eyebrows, in part because it's highly mutated.