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By Nathan craig 
1 hour ago
Durban: The KwaZulu-Natal Research Innovation and Sequencing Platform team has discovered the most mutated variant of Covid-19, and experts call for more support for genomic surveillance.
Local scientists presented a report late last month on Angola’s first genomic surveillance results.
Professor Tulio de Oliveira, director of KRISP, said the variant was discovered in three Tanzanian travelers in Angola, which was concerning as Tanzania published little or no Covid-19 data.
“It has 31 amino acid mutations, 11 peak protein mutations, and three deletions in the N-terminal domain. Compared to other variants of interest (VOC) and variants of interest (VOI), this is the most divergent. We report this as a new VOI given the constellation of mutations with known or suspected biological significance, specifically resistance to neutralizing antibodies and potentially increased transmissibility. While we have only detected three cases with it, this warrants an urgent investigation as the country of origin, Tanzania, has a largely undocumented epidemic and few public health measures in place to prevent the spread within and outside the country, ”he said. De Oliveira.
Infectious disease specialist Richard Lessells, leader of the KRISP group, said he had not crossed the borders into South Africa.
“So far we have identified only the three sequences of this variant and, to our knowledge, no other countries have been reported. We have received additional samples from Angola and are currently generating and analyzing data. Of course, we hope not to find it in other Angolan sequences. We have no idea whether it is still new or has been the dominant variant in Tanzania, and so we are calling for urgent attention, as we really need to better understand the virus and the epidemiology in Tanzania, ”Lessells said.
Following the discovery of VOC 501Y.V2, the Genomic Surveillance Network in South Africa partnered with the African Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the African Society for Laboratory Medicine through the Africa Pathogen Genomics Initiative. to strengthen the genomic surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 in to rapidly characterize the spread of current and other emerging VOCs and VOIs.
A preprinted manuscript entitled: “A Novel Variant of Interest of SARS-CoV-2 with Multiple Peak Mutations Detected by Travel Surveillance in Africa” was posted on the health sciences preprint server medRxiv.
It was a collaboration between the authors of the KRISP team, the Angolan Ministry of Health, Africa CDC, the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, the University of Oxford and the University of Cape Town.
According to the global Covid-19 tracker from the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering in the US, Tanzania has not experienced a Covid-19 death and much less new cases since May 2020.
Throughout the pandemic, Tanzanian President John Magufuli, who died last month speculated by Covid-19, has denied the pandemic and ruled out Covid-19 vaccines.
Tanzania stopped publishing data on Covid-19 infections and opened up the economy, including the resort island of Zanzibar. The stance taken by Magufuli drew much criticism from neighboring nations and the World Health Organization, as evidence suggests that many citizens had contracted the virus.
De Oliveira said: “When I spoke with Health Minister Zweli Mkhize, who was informed, he mentioned that our country is not in a position to comment on this as this involves two other health departments (Angola and Tanzania) and we follow all the discussions with the appropriate diplomatic process through the African Union and Africa CDC. “
Co-Chair of the Ministerial Advisory Committee on Covid-19, Professor Koleka Mlisana, said: “We advise the national health department of South Africa and therefore cannot comment on how other countries are responding to the pandemic, such as the MAC.”
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