Saturday | December 19, 2020

The Minister of Health Dr. Zweli Mkhize confirmed Friday night a new Covid-19 lineage named “501.V2 Variant” has been discovered. The Minister said it “has been identified by genomics scientists in South Africa (SA)”.

In a stalemate, the Dr. Mkhize announced 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 beginning of the pandemic in March. They noticed that a particular variant has increasingly dominated the findings of the samples collected in the past two months.”

The latest discovery by KRISP is the culmination of work done under the leadership of the renowned epidemiologist, Prof. Salim Abdooo Karim and other health specialists.

Although the researchers do not know about its origin yet or cause(s) thereof, the first cases were recorded in Nelson Mandela Bay (NMB), a municipality in the Eastern Cape.

Presenting the new findings, Prof. Karim, who is the Director of the Center for Aids Programme Research in South Africa (Caprisa), made mention of similar variants in Australia and England. Of relief at the moment is that the new coronavirus lineage is less lethal but highly infectious, the professor advanced.

The approach for its handling and treatment regimen will follow the coronavirus established protocols as it were. Similarly, the citizens conduct is still guided by the known standards.

As of Saturday, Covid-19 cases climbed to 913, 477 after 10, 939 more infections were recorded in SA. A total number of 254 were confirmed dead also, taking the accumulative death count to 24, 539.