Health minister Joe Phaahla has raised the possibility of new measures and restrictions to curb the spread of the B.1.1.529 Covid variant that has emerged in South Africa, Botswana and Hong Kong in recent days.
He said government officials, the Cabinet and the National Coronavirus Command Council would consult over the next few days on possible intervention measures and restrictions.
Phaalha said the new variant ‘reinforces the fact that this invisible enemy we are dealing with is very unpredictable’.
Health officials and scientists were monitoring the situation to determine its potential impact on South Africa
He indicated that an increase in travel out of Gauteng over the December holiday period was a possible cause of concern.
BusinessTech quoted bioinformatics scientist Professor Tulio de Oliveira as saying that the variant caught authorities and experts by surprise.
‘This variant did surprise us and it has many more mutations than expected,’ he said. ‘It is spreading very fast and we expect to see pressure in the healthcare system in the next few days and weeks.’
Professor Adrian Puren, acting executive director of the National Institute for Communicable Diseases, said: ‘Although the data is limited, our experts are working overtime with all established surveillance systems to understand the new variant and what the potential implications could be.’
According to a report in The Guardian, scientists describe the variant as having an ‘extremely high number’ of mutations – and presenting the risk of driving further waves of the disease.
The report says only 10 cases in three countries – South Africa, Botswana and Hong Kong – have been confirmed by genomic sequencing, but the variant has sparked serious concern among some researchers because a number of the mutations may help the virus evade immunity.
The B.1.1.529 variant has 32 mutations in the spike protein, the part of the virus that most vaccines use to prime the immune system against Covid. Mutations in the spike protein can affect the virus’s ability to infect cells and spread, but also make it harder for immune cells to attack the pathogen.
According to The Guardian, the variant was first spotted in Botswana, where three cases have now been sequenced. Six more have been confirmed in South Africa, and one in Hong Kong in a traveller returning from South Africa.
The first cases of the variant were collected in Botswana on 11 November, and the earliest in South Africa was recorded three days later. The case found in Hong Kong was a 36-year-old man who had a negative PCR test before flying from Hong Kong to South Africa, where he stayed from 22 October to 11 November. He tested negative on his return to Hong Kong, but tested positive on 13 November while in quarantine.
The Guardian cites posts on a genome-sharing website by Dr Tom Peacock, a virologist at Imperial College London, who noted that the ‘incredibly high amount of spike mutations suggest this could be of real concern’.
In a series of tweets, Peacock said it ‘very, very much should be monitored due to that horrific spike profile’, but added that it may turn out to be an ‘odd cluster’ that is not very transmissible. ‘I hope that’s the case,’ he wrote.
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