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South African Health Minister Zweli Mkhize has said that a new strain of the novel coronavirus was identified which was spreading faster, driving the second wave of the pandemic the nation was going through.
He said people should worry about this new variant of this virus, but there was no reason to panic. As South Africans headed towards holiday destinations or their ancestral rural homes for the festive season, the ministry said there was concern that the novel coronavirus was affecting many young people and people with no comorbidities, who were among those least at risk in the early days of the outbreak.
“We’ve convened this public briefing today to declare that a variant of the SARS-COV-2 virus — now termed 501. V2 Variant — has been identified by our genomics scientists here in South Africa,” Mkhize said told reporters”The evidence that has been collated strongly suggests that the current second wave we are experiencing is being driven by this new variant,” he added.
Earlier this week, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced more stringent measures in certain coastal provinces, including closing of the beaches which generally thousands of holidaymakers would pack out, as daily diseases rose exponentially in the past week.
“I’m afraid we don’t have good news for you. Our second wave is now well and truly on the rise in all our (nine) provinces,” said Prof Salim Abdool Karim, the head of the government’s Coronavirus Control Council. He said it was too early to tell if the new strain was more intense than the initial or whether it was re-infecting people who got infected in the first wave.
“We have two laboratories that are already growing the virus and we’ll start doing studies to answer that question. Once we have grown the virus, we will add in convalescence serum from those patients who recovered from the virus in the first wave to find out if it neutralises the virus,” Prof Karim said. He added that research were currently underway to see whether the vaccines which have been developed would be effective against the new strain.
“Importantly, the exact same diagnostic tests, same strategies, and the same treatments work against this variant,” Mkhize said, adding another area of concern was that there would be a leap in situations when people return from their vacations in January. “We should worry about it but there’s no reason to panic. We’ve identified this new variant but it is important to emphasise on non-pharmaceutical interventions which work — wearing masks, using sanitisers and maintaining social distancing.
“Because those have worked efficiently for COVID-19 and they will work as effectively for the new variant as it’s the behavior of the virus that we’re actually targeting,” the minister said. Mkhize called on the media and the people to not spread disinformation about the new variant of this virus since the clinical treatment are the same.
“There has not been any evidence to indicate that we will need to change any of the clinical treatments and when there are a demand for such, we’ll discuss it at that point.” The health minister confirmed that there would be no additional restrictions to those already announced by Ramaphosa. The health minister confirmed that there would be no additional restrictions to those declared by Ramaphosa.
