The director general of the International Air Transport Association (IATA) blamed the UK government for implementing excessive and non-scientific travel restrictions immediately upon hearing the news of the Omicron variant. “We are going to have more of them [variants]. We can’t keep shutting down aviation and shutting down economies when, in reality, it’s not providing any measures to restrict the transmission of the virus and, more importantly, it’s doing huge damage to the industry,” said Willie Walsh at a media briefing on Wednesday. The UK government reinstated the red list and restricted flights from southern African countries from where the variant was first reported. Concurrently, many countries around the world, including the European Union, restricted air travel. It was the UK government’s swift and harsh overnight response that initiated the comment from Walsh, who claimed that there was no evidence that proved travel restrictions actually work. “Based on all of …