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Mkhize said: “Doctors have also provided evidence of a change in the clinical picture: a higher proportion of younger people without comorbidities who have severe disease. We no longer ask young people to only think of others, they must also think of themselves because now they run the same risk of dying ”.
Abdool Karim, Co-Chair of the Ministerial Advisory Committee (MAC) on Coronavirus, said: “I’m afraid we don’t have good news for you, but we want to let you understand what we are seeing now in the second wave. . “
De Oliveira, from the KwaZulu-Natal Research Innovation and Sequence Platform (KRISP), said that genomic sequencing was vital to understanding Covid-19 and that in the first wave, it was clear that there were some variants that explained more cases than others, but these were not as dominant as the new variant.
“The new lineage appeared very quickly and began to dominate almost all the genomes that we have analyzed in the last two months. In fact, 90% of this second wave is dominated by this single lineage, however, in the first wave, three or four lineages accounted for about a third to 40% of all cases in the first wave, ”he said.
He added that scientists didn’t know where it came from, but it first began to spread rapidly into Nelson Mandela Bay and then moved down the Garden Route. It is now very present in Gauteng and the Western Cape (where it represents 88% of the samples).
The other provinces have much smaller numbers, but the pattern of transmission is the same, increasing the idea that this new variant is highly contagious.
“More transmission means more sick people and we really have to be careful not to overwhelm the healthcare system,” he said.
Mkhize said that in light of this news, he wanted to speak to the youth of SA.
“They are mostly young people who test positive, and our doctors have warned us that things have changed: they are seeing previously healthy young people become seriously ill,” he said.
He attacked the young man because of what he had seen in the videos that circulated on social networks.
“I have seen videos of young people partying, playing kissing games and without masks, and some are clearly intoxicated,” he said, adding that they were taking caution by ignoring the rules during a disaster.
“Not only must they adhere to life-saving measures when requested, they must know how to follow those rules,” he said.
Abdool Karim said: “We saw the peak [of first wave infections] in July and August, then low transmission for almost three months. But since the beginning of November we have seen a rapid increase in cases. We are really on the second rise. “
He said the virus was “spreading faster than the first wave” and “was probably already in most of South Africa.” However, it was not clear whether the second wave had, proportionally, more or fewer deaths.
He said it was not unusual for a virus to become more transmissible and that they generally become less lethal as they evolve, but said there was not enough evidence yet to confirm this lower lethality.
“In other words, the severity is not clear. But we haven’t seen any red flags, looking at our death information, “he said.
It is also unknown if those who were already infected with other variants can also acquire this one, explained Abdool Karim.
What is known, however, is that “we do not need to change strategies in terms of diagnosis and treatment and non-pharmaceutical interventions.”
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