Johannesburg, Nov. 26 (BNA): A new type of coronavirus has been detected in South Africa that scientists say is a cause for concern due to the high number of mutations and its rapid spread among young people in Gauteng, the country’s most populous province, Health Minister Jo Bahla announced Thursday.
Corona virus evolves as it spreads and many new variants, including those with worrying mutations, often die. Scientists are watching for potential changes that could be more transmissible or lethal, but determining whether new variables will have an impact on public health may take time.
In an online press conference, Bhalla said South Africa has seen a spike in new infections.
He said the new variant, currently identified as B.1.1.529, was also found in Botswana and Hong Kong in South African travelers.
The World Health Organization’s technical working group is due to meet on Friday to evaluate the new alternative and may decide whether or not to name it from the Greek alphabet.
The British government announced that it has banned flights from South Africa and five other countries in South Africa from Friday noon (1200 GMT), and that anyone who has recently arrived from those countries will be required to take a coronavirus test.
Britain’s health minister, Sajid Javid, said there were concerns that the new variant “may be more transmissible” than the prevailing Delta strain, and that “the vaccines we currently have may be less effective” against it.
The new variant contains a “constellation” of new mutations, said Tulio de Oliveira of the South African Genome Monitoring Network, who has tracked the spread of the delta variant in the country.
“The very large number of mutations is a concern for expected immune evasion and transmissibility,” de Oliveira said.
“This new variant has many, many mutations,” including more than 30 to the skeletal protein that affects transmissibility, he said. “We can see that the variant has the potential to spread very quickly. We expect to start seeing pressure in the healthcare system in the next few days and weeks.”
De Oliveira said a team of scientists from seven South African universities is studying the alternative. He said they have 100 complete genomes of it and expect to have more in the next few days.
After a period of relatively low transmission where South Africa recorded just over 200 new confirmed cases per day, last week daily new cases rapidly increased to more than 1,200 on Wednesday. On Thursday, they jumped to 2465.
About 41% of adults in South Africa have been vaccinated, and the number of injections given per day is relatively low, at less than 130,000, well below the government’s target of 300,000 per day.
South Africa currently has about 16.5 million doses of vaccines, by Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson, in the country and expects to deliver about 2.5 million more doses in the next week, according to Nicholas Crisp, acting director-general of the national health ministry.
South Africa, with a population of 60 million, has recorded more than 2.9 million cases of COVID-19 including more than 89,000 deaths.
To date, the delta variant remains the most contagious and has crowded out other previously worrisome variants including alpha, beta and mu. According to the sequences submitted by countries around the world to the world’s largest public database, more than 99% are deltas.
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