Is Botswana variant behind sudden Covid surge in South Africa?
Is Botswana variant behind sudden Covid surge in South Africa? Cases have risen fivefold in a week as experts fear super strain could be outcompeting Delta
South Africa’s infection rate has surged more than five-fold in a weekSome 22 cases of the mutant strain have now been detected in the countryThey are in three provinces, suggesting it is likely more widespread
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Fears are mounting that the new Botswana Covid variant is driving a rise in cases in neighbouring South Africa.
The national infection rate in South Africa has surged more than fivefold in the past week since the variant was first detected on November 12.
Just 22 infections of B.1.1.529, its scientific name, have been officially detected in the country so far, with a cluster in the province of Gauteng.
But it’s been spotted in nearly every province, public health experts in South Africa revealed today, and is already in three countries — including Hong Kong.
Alarm about the variant was first sounded yesterday after it was revealed it has 32 mutations and is the most evolved version of Covid yet.
Concerned health chiefs in South Africa revealed in a hastily organised press conference today that the variant may be outcompeting the dominant Delta variant because it can infect vaccinated people more easily.
Professor Tulio de Oliveira, a director of Covid surveillance in the South African province of KwaZulu-Natal, admitted experts were still ‘uncertain’ about the impact of the variant on the country’s epidemic.
But he explained the virus has five times more mutations on the specific part of the spike that antibodies bind to compared to Delta.
Current jabs train the immune system to recognise an older version of the spike, and lots of changes to the protein make it harder for the immune systems of vaccinated people to recognise the virus.
In a glimmer of hope, British experts told MailOnline yesterday that the extensive mutations might work against the virus, making it ‘unstable’.
They said it likely emerged in a lingering infection in an immunocompromised patient, possibly someone with undiagnosed AIDS.
Professor Oliveira said he had asked for an ‘urgent’ meeting with the World Health Organization (WHO) to address the rising variant, which could be named Nu in the coming days.
Some 26 cases of the variant have now been detected globally, the majority in South Africa.
But a lack of testing analysis on continental Africa may me masking the true caseload.
The first case was identified in Botswana on November 11 and it was picked up in South Africa the following day.
A case was also spotted in Hong Kong on November 13 in a 36-year-old man who had travelled back from South Africa on November 11.
In South Africa it has been officially spotted in the Gauteng, Limpopo and North West provinces but Professor Oliveria said it was in ‘nearly every province’.
Dr Tom Peacock, a virologist at Imperial College London, who first sounded the alarm about its spread, described the variant’s combination of mutations as ‘horrific’.
He warned that B.1.1.529 had the potential to be ‘worse than nearly anything else about’.
Professor David Livermore, a microbiologist at the University of East Anglia, told MailOnline the Botswana variant concerned him because of its ‘very extensive’ set of mutations.
He said: ‘This increases the risk of vaccine escape, but doesn’t prove that it will occur.
‘Nor is the strain’s infectiousness clear, and it too will be affected by the spike’s structure.’
The Botswana variant carries mutations K417N and E484A that are similar to those on the South African ‘Beta’ variant that made it better able to dodge vaccines.
But it also has the N440K, found on Delta, and S477N, on the New York variant, which are also linked to antibody escape.
The variant also has mutations P681H and N679K which are ‘rarely seen together’ and could make it yet more jab resistant.
And the mutation N501Y that makes viruses more transmissible and was previously seen on the Kent ‘Alpha’ variant and Beta among others.
Other mutations it has include G446S, T478K, Q493K, G496S, Q498R and Y505H, although their significance is not yet clear.
Dr Meera Chand, from the UKHSA, said: ‘The UK Health Security Agency, in partnership with scientific bodies across the globe, is constantly monitoring the status of SARS-CoV-2 variants as they emerge and develop worldwide.
‘As it is in the nature of viruses to mutate often and at random, it is not unusual for small numbers of cases to arise featuring new sets of mutations. Any variants showing evidence of spread are rapidly assessed.’
It comes as Covid cases continued to rise across the UK but deaths and hospitalisations still firmly trended downwards.
Another 43,676 cases have been recorded in the last 24 hours, a rise of 14.1 per cent on the 38,263 confirmed positive cases last Wednesday.
