SOURCE: Al Jazeera and News Agen­cies

● The dis­cov­ery of new vari­ant with a high num­ber of mu­ta­tions rais­es con­cerns about COVID-19 trans­mis­sions, trig­ger­ing trav­el re­stric­tions ●

A new COVID-19 vari­ant de­tect­ed in South Africa with a high num­ber of mu­ta­tions has raised con­cerns among sci­en­tists and trig­gered trav­el re­stric­tions by a num­ber of coun­tries amid fears of coro­n­avirus trans­mis­sions.

The Na­tion­al In­sti­tute for Com­mu­ni­ca­ble Dis­eases (NICD) said 22 pos­i­tive cas­es of the new vari­ant have been record­ed in the coun­try fol­low­ing ge­nom­ic se­quenc­ing. News of the an­nounce­ment broke on Thurs­day.

South Africa Health Min­is­ter Joe Phaahla said the vari­ant was be­hind an “ex­po­nen­tial” in­crease in re­port­ed cas­es, mak­ing it “a ma­jor threat”.

What do we know about the new vari­ant?

The new COVID-19 vari­ant, called B.1.1.529, has a very un­usu­al con­stel­la­tion of mu­ta­tions, which are wor­ry­ing be­cause they could help it evade the body’s im­mune re­sponse and make it more trans­mis­si­ble, sci­en­tists have said.

South African sci­en­tists have de­tect­ed more than 30 mu­ta­tions to the spike pro­tein, the part of the virus that helps to cre­ate an en­try point for the coro­n­avirus to in­fect hu­man cells.

Tulio de Oliveira, di­rec­tor of the KwaZu­lu-Na­tal Re­search and In­no­va­tion Se­quenc­ing Plat­form, said the vari­ant has baf­fled ex­perts. “It has a big jump in evo­lu­tion, many more mu­ta­tions than we ex­pect­ed,” de Oliveira said.

In com­par­i­son, the Be­ta and Delta vari­ant re­spec­tive­ly have three and two mu­ta­tions. The lat­ter orig­i­nat­ed in In­dia and caused the dev­as­tat­ing sec­ond wave last year.

“The one piece of good news is that it can be de­tect­ed by a PCR test”, de Oliveira added.

The mu­ta­tions are as­so­ci­at­ed with in­creased an­ti­body re­sis­tance, which makes the virus more con­ta­gious.

The World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WHO) said it is “close­ly mon­i­tor­ing” the re­port­ed vari­ant and is ex­pect­ed to meet on Fri­day to de­ter­mine if it should be des­ig­nat­ed a vari­ant of “in­ter­est” or of “con­cern”.

Are COVID-19 vac­cines ef­fec­tive against the new vari­ant?

COVID-19 vac­cines are based on the orig­i­nal coro­n­avirus spike pro­tein, rais­ing con­cerns that the new dra­mat­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent spike pro­tein could ren­der vac­cines less ef­fec­tive.

Maria Van Kerk­hove, the head of Emerg­ing Dis­eases and Zoono­sis at WHO, said on Thurs­day that “the con­cern is that when you have so many mu­ta­tions, it can have an im­pact on how the virus be­haves.”

“It will take a few weeks for us to un­der­stand what im­pact this vari­ant has on any po­ten­tial vac­cines,” Van Kerk­hove added.

Any new vari­ant that is able to evade vac­cines or spread faster than the now-dom­i­nant Delta vari­ant might pose a sig­nif­i­cant threat as the world emerges from the pan­dem­ic.

But Pro­fes­sor He­len Rees, of the WHO’s African Re­gion­al Im­mu­niza­tion Tech­ni­cal Ad­vi­so­ry Group, urged peo­ple not to pan­ic.

“[Cur­rent­ly] we are try­ing to iden­ti­fy how wide­ly spread this is. There will be a lot of work look­ing at: Is it more trans­mis­si­ble? Is it as­so­ci­at­ed with any more sever­i­ty of dis­ease? Does it ren­der the vac­cines less ef­fec­tive?” Rees told Al Jazeera.

“In the mean­time, our big re­quest to the world, in terms of vac­ci­nat­ing the African re­gion, is please get the vac­cines out in­to the re­gion be­cause as we know vari­ants don’t stay in one coun­try,” she added.

De­tec­tion and re­sponse

The vari­ant has spread rapid­ly through the Gaut­eng province of South Africa, home to the eco­nom­ic hub Jo­han­nes­burg and the cap­i­tal Pre­to­ria.

A to­tal of about 50 con­firmed cas­es have been iden­ti­fied in South Africa, Hong Kong and Botswana. The con­firmed cas­es in Botswana and Hong Kong were de­tect­ed among trav­ellers from South Africa.

In re­sponse, Britain banned all trav­el from the coun­try and five oth­er south­ern African na­tions, name­ly Botwsana, Eswa­ti­ni, Lesotho, Namib­ia and Zim­bab­we start­ing at noon lo­cal time on Fri­day.

Is­rael al­so an­nounced on Thurs­day it was bar­ring its cit­i­zens from trav­el­ling to South Africa. It al­so in­clud­ed Lesotho, Botswana, Zim­bab­we, Mozam­bique, Namib­ia and Eswa­ti­ni to its high­est-risk trav­el list.

On Fri­day, the Is­raeli Health Min­istry said a new coro­n­avirus vari­ant had been de­tect­ed in trav­el­er who re­turned from Malawi.

EU Com­mis­sion chief Ur­su­la von der Leyen al­so said the EU will aim to halt air trav­el from the south­ern African re­gion.

“The Com­mis­sion will pro­pose, in close co­or­di­na­tion with Mem­ber States, to ac­ti­vate the emer­gency brake to stop air trav­el from the south­ern African re­gion due to the vari­ant of con­cern B.1.1.529,” she said in a tweet.

Have in­fec­tion rates in­creased?

The num­ber of dai­ly in­fec­tions in Africa’s hard­est-hit coun­try has in­creased 10-fold since the start of the month.

The NICD said the num­ber of de­tect­ed cas­es and the per­cent­age test­ing pos­i­tive are “in­creas­ing quick­ly” in three of the coun­try’s provinces, in­clud­ing Gaut­eng.

The NICD did not at­tribute the lat­est resur­gence to the new vari­ant, al­though some sci­en­tists sus­pect it may be the cause.

The coun­try’s dai­ly num­ber of in­fec­tions hit 1,200 on Wednes­day, up from 106 ear­li­er in the month.

Be­fore the de­tec­tion of the new vari­ant, au­thor­i­ties had pre­dict­ed a fourth wave to hit South Africa ahead of the fes­tive sea­son, start­ing about the mid­dle of De­cem­ber.

South Africa has the high­est pan­dem­ic num­bers in Africa with ap­prox­i­mate­ly 2.95 mil­lion cas­es, of which 89,657 have been fa­tal.

Last year, the Be­ta vari­ant of the virus first emerged in South Africa, al­though un­til now its in­fec­tion num­bers have been dri­ven by Delta.

Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 41 per­cent of adults have re­ceived at least one dose, while 35 per­cent are ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed. Those num­bers are far above the con­ti­nen­tal av­er­age of 6.6 per­cent of peo­ple vac­ci­nat­ed.