It may be more transmissible than Delta and it’s spreading fastest among under-25s, so now’s the time to get vaccinated
Prof Anne von Gottberg from the National Institute for Communicable Diseases said the variant had been detected in about 100 genomes so far, and Phaahla said they mainly involved under-25s, among whom the vaccination rate is only 26%. “They are at great risk,” he said.
De Oliveira said he and other scientists at universities around the country had researched the variant as quickly as possible and found that it has a “very high number of mutations” with more than 30 located at the spike protein. “Many are finishing school and university and they want to go away for the holiday season but this is the real time to all play our part.”
“Initially it looked like cluster outbreaks and a spread of the Delta variant on university campuses, but from yesterday we got indication from scientists that there could be another variant at play,” said Phaahla.This means each infected person will infect two others, “so we will see a very fast increase of cases going forward”, said De Oliveira.
He added: “This is what gives us some concern, and we are also concerned that it is not just isolated in Gauteng.”
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