The announcement by officials in South Africa on Thursday about the discovery of a new COVID variant has caused concern across the world.
UK Health Secretary Sajid Javid announced on Thursday flights from six countries in Africa would be temporarily suspended from Friday noon.
These countries are South Africa, Namibia, Lesotho, Eswatini (previously Swaziland), Zimbabwe and Botswana. The Indian government on Thursday asked all states and Union territories to conduct rigorous screening and testing of all international travellers coming from or transiting through South Africa, Hong Kong and Botswana.
Sky News reported on Thursday that 57 cases of the new variant, called B.1.1.529, have been identified in South Africa (53 cases), Hong Kong (1 case) and Botswana (3). The single case in Hong Kong was a person who had travelled from South Africa.
The WHO is expected to hold an emergency meeting to discuss the variant on Friday. The WHO could label B.1.1.529 as a “variant of concern or variant of interest”. It could be named 'Nu', the next available letter in the Greek naming system for COVID variants, if it is flagged by WHO.
B.1.1.529 was discovered following a worrying rise in COVID cases in South Africa. “They increased to more than 1,200 per day on Wednesday and 2,465 on Thursday, having previously been just over 200 per day,” Sky News reported.
Australia's ABC News reported, “Data collected by laboratories across the country point to the variant being mostly present in the densely populated province of Gauteng, which contains South Africa's largest city, Johannesburg, and administrative capital Pretoria. But the variant has also been found in other provinces.”
What we know
B.1.1.529 has been considered worrying as it has mutations in the spike protein. “The variant stood out because it contains more than 30 changes to the spike protein—the SARS-CoV-2 protein that recognizes host cells and is the main target of the body’s immune responses. Many of the changes have been found in variants such as Delta and Alpha and are linked to heightened infectivity and the ability to evade infection-blocking antibodies,” An article in Nature said on Thursday.
The Guardian reported senior scientists said B.1.1.529 was “the worst variant they had seen since the start of the pandemic”.
The Guardian reported, “It has 32 mutations in the spike protein, the part of the virus that most vaccines use to prime the immune system against COVID. That is about double the number associated with the Delta variant. Mutations in the spike protein can affect the virus’s ability to infect cells and spread, but also make it harder for immune cells to attack the pathogen.”
Dr Tom Peacock, a virologist at Imperial College, London, was quoted by Sky News as describing the mutations as “really awful”.
Sajid Javed told reporters the number of mutations means B.1.1.529 “may well be more transmissible and the current vaccines that we have may well be less effective”.
Penny Moore, a virologist at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, told Nature that “There are even hints from computer modelling that B.1.1.529 could dodge immunity conferred by another component of the immune system called T cells.” T cells produce antibodies against viral infections in the body.
Aris Katzourakis, an expert on viruses at Oxford, told Nature, “A burning question is does it reduce vaccine effectiveness, because it has so many changes.” Katzourakis warned that countries with a high prevalence of the Delta variant must watch for signs of B.1.1.529.
The team led by Moore is planning to test the ability of B.1.1.529 to evade antibodies and other immune responses.
Vaccination solution?
Only about 41 per cent of adults in South Africa have been vaccinated, with the daily inoculation rate of 130,000 well short of the government's goal of 300,000 jabs.
Experts told Independent that there was a need to rush vaccine supplies to the southern African region as an emergency measure, given rise of B.1.1.529.
