South African scientists identify new type of COVID with ‘increased transmissibility’

A new strain, possibly more contagious than COVID-19, has been found in South Africa and elsewhere, according to new research.

C 1.2. The variant was discovered by scientists from South African groups, the KwaZulu-Natal Research Innovation and Sequencing Platform, known as Crisp and the National Institute of Infectious Diseases. The flag was first put up in May and has since been spotted in most of South Africa’s nine provinces, as well as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mauritius, Portugal, New Zealand and Switzerland.

According to Bloomberg, the researchers said the mutations seen in this variant give it an “increased susceptibility to transmissibility” and an “increased ability to evade antibodies,” such as those from previous infections and recovery or vaccination.

Tulio de Oliveira, director of Krisp, said at an immunology conference on Monday that researchers are still investigating how vaccinated and unvaccinated people respond to the new variant.

“It’s only been detected in about 100 genomes, which is very few,” he said. “It’s still a very small percentage, but again, we’re watching it closely. It has all the hallmarks of immune escape.”

However, researchers note C.1.2. He has “towers associated with mutations”.

According to the paper, the new variant accounts for 2% of all cases in South Africa in July, while the delta variant accounts for 89%.

Only about 14% of the South African population is fully vaccinated.

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