Over the past month, Africa has recorded the highest growth in new infections, with a 13% growth over the last week. With only two million cases and 45 000 deaths, Sub-Saharan Africa still only has a small part of the caseload of other regions.
Dr John Nkengasong, who heads the African Centres for Disease Control (CDC), said: “I think this is serious, the second wave is extremely aggressive.” The latest surge is thought to be driven by the more transmissible South African variant, known as 501Y.V2. President Cyril Ramaphosa said this variant, found in 90% of new cases, was likely responsible for the country’s latest surge, which has caused morgues to fill up and hospitals to run short of staff and critical resources such as oxygen. North of the border, Zimbabwe this week started a month-long lockdown to curb a rise in new cases and protect its own overburdened health care system. Nearly two million Zimbabweans live in SA and regularly travel and forth, potentially spreading the virus.
Rashida Ferrand, a London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine professor working at the Parirenyatwa Group of Hospitals in the Zimbabwean capital Harare told Reuters that there was “a pretty high likelihood” that the new SA strain of the virus identified could be circulating in Zimbabwe.
Lockdowns may now not be enough to control the spread of the new variant – certain studies of the similar, highly transmissible UK variant suggests that it may now spread too fast for its R (reproduction) value to be brought below 1, or otherwise cause a much slower decline in infections. Fortunately, it seems that lockdown measures in the UK are having some effect.
Meanwhile, there are concerns that the SA variant may also be able to evade the protection of current vaccines, according to new research – but that has not been peer reviewed yet. Research in SA on the question is expected to provide answers. Meanwhile, 12 gene sequencing laboratories are being geared up around Africa to track the spread of the virus variants, and some genome sequencing work has been done since December, but not enough to paint a clear picture.
Source: The Telegraph
