December 8, according to local media reports, Health Minister Mukez announced that the KwaZulu-Natal Research Innovation and Sequencing Platform had discovered a variant of the novel coronavirus after sequencing hundreds of virus samples. Mukez said that there is currently evidence that the variant drove the second wave of the epidemic in South Africa.
Karim, a leading South African epidemiological and infectious disease expert, said that the COVID-19 variant appeared a few weeks ago and that the variant spreads very fast in South Africa.
Like variants that have been found in the UK, Australia and other countries. Karim stressed that it is too early to judge whether the variant is more serious than the first wave of the virus and whether it is reinfecting the first wave of infected people, and it will take time to verify whether the current vaccine can fight the new variant.
But social distancing, insisting on wearing masks and hand disinfection are still basic measures for epidemic prevention.
