Researchers in South Africa are racing to track the concerning rise of a new variant of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. The variant harbours a large number of mutations found in other variants, including Delta, and it seems to be spreading quickly across South Africa.
A top priority is to follow the variant more closely as it spreads: it was first identified in Botswana this month and has turned up in travellers to Hong Kong from South Africa. Scientists are also trying to understand the variant’s properties, such as whether it can evade immune responses triggered by vaccines and whether it causes more or less severe disease than other variants do.
“We’re flying at warp speed,” says Penny Moore, a virologist at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, whose lab is gauging the variant’s potential to dodge immunity from vaccines and previous infections. There are anecdotal reports of reinfections and cases in vaccinated individuals, but “at this stage it’s too early to tell anything,” Moore adds.
“There’s a lot we don’t understand about this variant,” Richard Lessells, an infectious disease physician at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, South Africa, said at a press briefing organized by South Africa’s health department on 25 November. “The mutation profile gives us concern, but now we need to do the work to understand the significance of this variant and what it means for the response to the pandemic.”
A World Health Organization (WHO) expert group will meet on 26 November, and will likely label the strain — currently known as B.1.1.529 — as a variant of concern or variant of interest, Tulio de Oliveira, a bioinformatician at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, said at the briefing. The variant would likely be named Nu — the next available letter in the Greek alphabet naming system for coronavirus variants — if it is flagged by the WHO group.
Researchers also want to measure the variant’s potential to spread globally, possibly sparking new waves of infection or exacerbating ongoing rises being driven by Delta.
Changes to spike
Researchers spotted B.1.1.529 in genome-sequencing data from Botswana. The variant stood out because it contains more than 30 changes to the spike protein — the SARS-CoV-2 protein that recognizes host cells and is the main target of the body’s immune responses. Many of the changes have been found in variants such as Delta and Alpha and are linked to heightened infectivity and the ability to evade infection-blocking antibodies.
But the variant’s apparent sharp rise in South Africa’s Gauteng province — home to Johannesburg — is also setting off alarm bells. Cases increased rapidly in the province in November, particularly in schools and among young people, according to Lessells. Genome sequencing and other genetic analysis from de Oliveira’s team found that the B.1.1.529 variant was responsible for all of 77 of the virus samples they analysed from Gauteng, collected between 12 and 20 November. Analysis of hundreds more samples are in the works.
The variant harbours a spike mutation that allows it to be detected by genotyping tests that deliver results much more rapidly than genome sequencing, Lessells said. Preliminary evidence from these tests suggest that B.1.1.529 is spreading much wider than Gauteng. “It gives us concern that this variant may already be circulating quite widely in the country,” Lessells said.
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Translation: The boosters are starting to do their job.
Facts. Every time a new jab rolls out there’s a new variant.
The virus was engineered to begin with, so it must be attempting to shake off the mutations they introduced into it to begin with.
The Most High Yah is just shaking his head in disgust, when will the people learn, they tricked them in taking this thing and now it is reveling it’s true colour . Let’s pray for the souls, and pray that the Father will have m.ercy on us.
New variant. We don’t know if it’s dangerous but we’re moving as fast as we can so we can all get back to panicking as usual. I can bet the conclusion will be either:
1 – It’s not significantly capable of escaping the vaccine so get the vaccine…or
2 – It’s vaccine resistant so get the vaccine
No information on if it’s less deadly, as was the case with delta but just enough information to panic on.
As per the scientist, this mutant has twice as many mutations in its spike as Delta. It will most likely evade the jabs. However, Botswana is reporting that the cases are mild thus far; the Covid 19 task force stated that the 4 cases of “Omicron” were found in FULLY VAXXED travellers.
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