The second wave of COVID-19 in South Africa is coming. Due to the recent discovery of the mutant COVID-19 virus, many countries have begun to restrict flights from South Africa.
As of the 23rd, eight countries, including Germany, Turkey, Israel and Switzerland, have announced that South African flights are banned from entering the country.
According to the British Guardian on the 22nd, South Africa first reported the new mutant virus on the 18th and named it “501. V2”. Regarding whether the new strain was formed in South Africa, South African Health Minister Mukez said that so far, South African medical experts have not identified the source of the mutant virus.
It was first discovered in the Eastern Cape Province in southern South Africa and then spread to the surroundings, but it is not possible to determine that the mutant virus originated in the Eastern Cape.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic in South Africa in March, a team led by the KwaZulu-Natal Research Innovation and Sequencing Platform has sequenced hundreds of virus samples and noticed that a specific mutant virus has become increasingly dominant in the past two months. Kareem, co-chair of the South African COVID-19 task force, said that 80-90% of the COVID-19 samples they currently obtain are this variant.
Clinical data show that more patients are young people without basic diseases, but they show more serious symptoms than they have previously contracted the novel coronavirus.
WHO said on the 21st that the variants of the novel coronavirus found in South Africa, although they appear almost at the same time as the variants found in the United Kingdom, are unrelated variants and have nothing to do with each other.
The first peak of the epidemic in South Africa occurred in July and August. Nearly 14,000 new confirmed cases per day, and then gradually fell back. In September, the number of new confirmed cases decreased to about 2,000 per day, but it began to increase again in November, and by December 19, more than 10,000 new confirmed cases in a single day.
Medical experts say the second wave of the coronavirus in South Africa is related to the increase in social gatherings at the end of the year, which caused widespread community transmission. After the outbreak of the second wave of the epidemic, the South African government tightened the blockade of beaches, but did not raise the level of the national blockade.
In Johannesburg, the reporter of the Global Times saw that the local restaurants and cafes were still open normally. In Cape Town, a tourist resort, local law enforcement departments sent a large number of people to patrol the beach. Those who violate the regulations to the beach will be fined heavily fined and may even be imprisoned.
Data released by the South African Ministry of Health on the 22nd showed that there were 9,501 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 on that day, with a total of 940,212 confirmed cases, 339 new deaths and 25,246 deaths.
The South African government announced on the 22nd that it had made a down payment of $19.2 million to the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization to ensure that South Africa entered the WHO’s “COVID-19 Vaccine Implementation Plan”.
