Spread of Covid-19 variants found in UK, India is inevitable, says expert

File picture: Jason Cairnduff/Reuters

File picture: Jason Cairnduff/Reuters

Published May 10, 2021

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Cape Town - The detection of new Covid-19 variants is inevitable and as people continue to travel across the world, the variants will continue to spread.

Director of the KZN Research Innovation and Sequencing Platform (Krisp) at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Professor Tulio de Oliveira, said 15 Covid-19 variants originating from other countries had been detected in South Africa.

Four cases of the dominant variant in India (B.1.617.2) were detected in South Africa over the weekend and 11 of the dominant variant in the UK (B.1.1.7).

Two people from Gauteng and another two from KwaZulu-Natal, all with the B.1.617.2 strain, all had a history of recent arrivals from India.

The National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) released the findings over the weekend.

Acting NICD executive director Professor Adrian Puren said it was not surprising that new variants had been detected in South Africa.

“We would like to assure the public that the institute is focusing their resources and research efforts towards understanding the variants and what the potential implications are for South Africa,” he said.

De Oliveira said there have been several other samples from cases with recent travel into South Africa that were being sequenced. Results were expected within the next few days.

“There is some preliminary evidence to suggest that B.1.617.2 may be associated with increased transmissibility. There is also some evidence to suggest some degree of immune evasion but that may be modest and lower than what has been observed with 501Y.V2 (B.1.351),” he said.

Similarly, the World Health Organization's chief scientist, Soumya Swaminathan, said over the weekend that the Covid-19 variant spreading in India could be more contagious and have some degree of immune evasion, which could be contributing to the country's explosive outbreak.

De Oliveira said scientists from the Network for Genomic Surveillance in South Africa (NGS-SA) had recently intensified the monitoring of confirmed Covid-19 cases in recent arrivals to the country.

The NGS-SA is a consortium of scientists funded by the Department of Science and Innovation and the South Africa Medical Research Council.

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