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2h ago
By Lou-Anne Daniels and Amélie Bottollier-DePois
The number of positive Covid-19 cases in South Africa rose by 12,271 to 1,440,839, Health Minister Zweli Mkhize confirmed on Saturday.
During the last 24 hours, 498 more deaths have been registered, bringing the death toll in the country since the start of the pandemic to 40,574.
With 28,359, Gauteng currently has the highest number of active Covid-19 cases, with the Western Cape closely following with 26,480 active cases.
The province with the fewest active cases is the Eastern Cape with 4,347. The province’s Nelson Mandela Bay was declared a hotspot ahead of the holiday season.
Deaths and recoveries
Of the 498 deaths announced by Mkhize on Saturday, 201 were from Gauteng, 125 from KwaZulu-Natal, 71 from the Western Cape, 45 from the Free State, 19 from Limpopo, 18 from Mpumalanga and two from the North Cape.
To date, 217,492 people have recovered from the disease, putting the country’s recovery rate at 86.6 percent, Mkhize said.
Tests
The number of tests carried out is now 7,947,007, with 64,143 carried out in the last 24 hours, according to the minister.
Do virus mutations depend on chance?
The emergence of several more infectious strains of the new SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus has concerned governments and scientists, who are investigating how and why the virus became more transmissible.
Like all viruses, SARS-CoV-2 mutates to maximize its chances of survival.
When it replicates, small errors are introduced into its genetic coding.
Most of these are inconsequential. But some, like the variants of the virus that recently emerged in Britain, South Africa and Brazil, may give the virus a decisive new edge.
“When we maintain a high number of cases, we are maximizing the opportunities for the virus to get into strange situations, which can be rare, and most of them lead nowhere,” said Emma Hodcroft, an epidemiologist at the University of Bern.
More cases equate to more transmissions, maximizing the chances of a significant mutation occurring, he said.
“If we keep the number of cases lower, we essentially restrict the playing field of the virus.”
Wendy Barclay, a virologist at Imperial College London, said the mutations were the result of several factors.
“It’s a combination of how many viruses there are, the number of times you roll the dice defines what happens, along with the environment the virus is in,” he said.
It was not unexpected that the new variants appeared after a year of Covid-19 as global immunity levels rise through vaccines and natural infection, he added.
“In South Africa and Brazil there was already a fairly high level of antibody response from people who had been infected and had recovered from the virus.”
Other experts expressed doubts that immunity levels directly influenced the current mutations.
Bjorn Meyer, a virologist at the Institut Pasteur in Paris, said each mutation was more likely to occur in a single individual, who then passed it on to others.
He explained the possibility of a patient whose immune system was compromised and therefore could not clear the virus as quickly as the others.
“In this patient there may be something faulty in the response, so the virus can remain for a long time,” Meyer told AFP.
While the Covid-19 virus generally infects people for about 10 days before being neutralized by the body, some studies have shown that certain patients can carry it for several weeks or longer, maximizing the window for mutations.
“There is still some level of immune pressure on the virus in this patient and the virus is forced to mutate,” Meyer said.
IOL and AFP
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