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The UK government has announced new travel restrictions for South Africa after a second variant of Covid-19 was detected in the country.
In a statement on Wednesday (December 23), UK Health and Welfare Secretary Matt Hancock said that the restrictions would take effect immediately and that flights to South Africa would be stopped.
He added that anyone in the UK who has been to South Africa in the past two weeks must immediately self-quarantine.
“As part of our surveillance, and thanks to the impressive genomic capabilities of South Africans, we have detected two cases of another new coronavirus variant here in the UK.
“They are both case contacts who have traveled from South Africa in recent weeks,” he said.
Hancock said the UK was grateful to the South African government for the rigor of its science and the openness and transparency with which it has acted.
“This new variant is very worrying, because it is even more transmissible and appears to have mutated more than the new variant that has been discovered here,” he said.
New variant
Health Minister Dr Zweli Mkhize announced this week that genomics scientists in South Africa have identified a variant of the SARS-COV-2 (Covid-19) virus, currently referred to as the ‘501.V2 variant’.
Mkhize said that a genomics team, led by the Kwazulu-Natal Research Innovation and Sequencing Platform, or KRISP, has sequenced hundreds of samples from across the country since the start of the pandemic in March.
They noted that one particular variant has increasingly dominated the findings from samples collected in the past two months.
In addition, clinicians have provided anecdotal evidence of a change in the epidemiological clinical picture, in particular noting that they are seeing a higher proportion of younger patients with no comorbidities presenting with critical illness.
The evidence that has been collected, therefore, strongly suggests that the current second wave we are experiencing is being driven by this new variant.
Explaining the findings, Professor Salim Abdool Karim said that the second wave shows some early signs that it is spreading faster than the first wave.
“It is still very early, but at this stage, preliminary data suggests that the virus that now dominates in the second wave is spreading faster than the first wave. It is not clear if the second wave has more or less deaths, that is, the severity is still not very clear.
“Hopefully it is a less severe virus, but we have no clear evidence at this time. We have not seen red flags in our current information on deaths, “he said.
“We had all these different strains that were routinely spread in South Africa during our first wave and beyond. What became quite different from what we did not expect is how quickly this variant has become dominant in South Africa.
This particular virus has three mutations in the receptor-binding domain, which is the actual part of the virus that attaches itself to the human cell. One of the interpretations of these changes is that the affinity for the ACE2 receptor increases, he said.
“The other two possible mutations add some potential antibody escape, but the full implications of combining the three mutations still need to be understood in more detail.”
Karim said the new variant has increased the viral load in the body.
“When we look at this new variant, the CT score is lower than that of the other viruses that have spread during our first wave. It means that the amount of virus on the swab is higher. A lower score means more viruses – we refer to that as viral load. When we do a swab, we get a lot more virus in these patients who have the 501.V2 virus, ”he said.
“The higher viral load in these swabs can translate into higher transmission efficiency. If there is higher transmissibility, it can translate to a higher R0 (the number of additional people a patient can infect).
“While the other viruses are still spreading, this virus is spreading much faster than when we take swabs, it is the dominant variant that we see. This can translate into a second wave that can have many more cases than the first wave.
“We know that it is an unusual variant. It has been reported in other countries, including the UK, Australia, and several others. In our country, we are finding that between 80 and 90% of the virus is this 501.V2 mutant ”.
He said that there are still many issues that need to be investigated.
“We don’t know where it came from and we don’t know why it was formed. We found the first one in Nelson Mandela Bay, but we don’t know if it originated in Nelson Mandela Bay. It’s too early to tell if it’s more serious. “
Mkhize said that while this mutation is cause for concern, there is no reason to panic.
“We call on all the media and the medical and scientific community to focus on the facts and avoid speculation or issuing unsubstantiated statements and generating panic and misinformation.
“This research underscores the need for all of us to loyally adhere to the practice of non-pharmaceutical interventions that work just as effectively in any pandemic of this nature, including Covid-19, as we know it, and that are just as effective for a mutant variant. of the same virus, “he said.
“Nothing will beat the rigid implementation of the use of masks, use of hand sanitizer and soap washing and distancing. Many countries experienced a second wave that was more severe than the first, even when no mutations were reported. “
He said that there is no evidence to date to suggest the need to change the clinical treatment and patient management of Covid-19 in the second wave and that this discovery does not require additional restrictive measures.
Read: Cape Town should reach the peak of the second wave Covid-19 within the next month: premier
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