Countries around the world, including Taiwan, yesterday rushed to restrict travel from South Africa and its neighbors after a potentially highly transmissible variant of SARS-CoV-2 was detected in the country’s Gauteng Province.
Scientists detected the variant — called “B.1.1.529” — on Tuesday in samples from Nov. 14 to Tuesday last week.
On Wednesday, scientists sequenced more genomes, informed the South African government that they were concerned and asked the WHO to convene its technical working group on virus evolution for yesterday.
Photo: REUTERS
The country has identified about 100 cases of the variant, mostly from its most populated province. Its daily infection rate nearly doubled on Thursday to 2,465.
Researchers are racing to determine the characteristics and threat of the heavily mutated strain.
South African scientists have said that some of the mutations are associated with resistance to neutralizing antibodies and enhanced transmissibility, but others are not well understood, so its full significance is not yet clear.
British health officials have said that B.1.1.529 has more than 30 mutations of the spike protein that viruses use to enter human cells.
That is about double the number of the Delta variant, making it substantially different from the original virus that COVID-19 vaccines were designed to counteract.
The WHO said it could take several weeks to understand the variant and cautioned against imposing new travel curbs.
The “WHO recommends that countries continue to apply a risk based and a scientific approach when implementing travel measures ... implementing travel measures is being cautioned against,” WHO spokesman Christian Lindmeier said.
The variant has also been detected in Botswana and Hong Kong among travelers from South Africa.
The EU — struggling to cope with a fresh surge dominated by the Delta variant — has announced a ban on arrivals from South Africa, and partial bans on those from Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
Israel said it had quarantined three people, all vaccinated against COVID-19, identified with the new variant, with one having just returned from Malawi.
The WHO said it was “closely monitoring” the variant and weighing whether it should be designated a variant of “interest” or of “concern.”
It is also up to the WHO to decide whether to give the strain a name taken from the Greek alphabet, as for previous major variants such as Delta.
Spooked by the variant, European markets fell more than 3 percent, with airline shares hit especially hard.
Tokyo closed down 2.53 percent, after having lost more than 3 percent in the middle of the day.
Additional reporting by Reuters
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