Tag: France

Categories : COVID General InterestTags :

French President Macron in SA for Talks on COVID

On By ModernMedia

French President Emmanuel Macron arrived in South Africa today for talks with President Cyril Ramaphosa on a range of issues including possible technological assistance to aid South Africa’s response to the COVID pandemic.

On the agenda of the visit is the economic, health, research and manufacturing responses to the COVID pandemic.

Arriving from Rwanda, where he acknowledged France’s role in the 1994 genocide, Macron held talks in Pretoria with President Ramaphosa, whom he met last week in Paris at a summit on African economies.

The pair were also due to attend an event to support vaccine production on the continent, sponsored by the European Union, the United States and the World Bank. 

So far South Africa is the country worst hit by COVID on the continent as far available monitoring can determine, and has vaccinated just 1 percent of its population of 59 million people.

South Africa’s immunisation efforts have been hampered by delayed procurement, and then selling off its AstraZeneca vaccines obtained via Covax to other African countries after trial results showed drastically reduced effectiveness against the local B.1.351 variant. Rollout of the replacement Johnson & Johnson vaccine was paused for two weeks in April due to blood clot fears.

Now, along with India, South Africa is campaigning for a waiver of intellectual property rights on COVID vaccines, so that each country may produce its own doses. This effort has met with stiff resistance so far.

Macron has voiced support for a technology transfer to enable vaccine production sites to be set up in poorer countries.

Visit long delayed

Macron’s visit to South Africa has been long delayed due to the COVID pandemic.
The initial purpose for the trip had been to discuss multilateral cooperation with South Africa, an important G20 partner which is also a regular guest at G7 summits.

According to Foreign Policy, the French leader will also seek to establish greater influence in a region that is experiencing greater instability, marked by recent insurgencies in Mozambique.   

Jihadist attacks forced French energy giant Total to suspend work on a multi-billion euro gas project in Cabo Delgado province after a nearby town was targeted.

Before he returns to France, he will pay a visit to the Nelson Mandela Foundation, whose main missions are the fight against AIDS and education in rural areas.

Source: RFI

Categories : COVID Lab Tests and ImagingTags :

New French COVID Variant Invisible to PCR Tests

On By ModernMedia

French authorities have announced the detection of a variant of SARS-CoV-2 in the northwestern region of Brittany that has escaped detection by standard polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests.

Real-time PCR tests are considered to be the current gold standard for detection of SARS-CoV-2, and currently take 4-6h to yield a result. PCR tests make millions to billions of copies of a small sample of DNA to create a larger sample for analysis.

Eight carriers of the variant were identified using genomic sequencing among a cluster of 79 cases in the town of Lannion in the Côtes d’Armor on March 13th.

In a statement on Monday, the French health ministry said that according to initial analyses, the new variant did not appear more transmissible or cause more severe disease. However, on Tuesday, authorities said that this variant was able to escape detection in PCR tests is raising concern.

Belgian virologist and interfederal COVID spokesperson Steven Van Gucht clarified the situation, in that about eight individuals presented with standard coronavirus symptoms, “but the tests remained negative.”

The World Health Organization has labelled this new French COVID variant a ‘variant under investigation’ (VUI), of which there are many thousands currently being monitored, as opposed to more serious variants like the South African B.1.351 variant which is more transmissible and is a ‘variant of concern’ (VOC).

However, just because this variant escaped the PCR tests being used in that area does not mean that it necessarily can escape all of them, as laboratories vary in the tests that they perform.

According to Gucht, tests differ in the different parts of the virus they look for, and also test for at least two to three. “Usually, a good test does not depend on detecting one specific part. So, if there is a mutation in one part of the virus, that signal may be lost, but there is usually a second or third signal that will be found,” explained Gucht.

French authorities are setting up systems to monitor the spread of this variant, and are also putting measures in place to contain it.

Source: News-Medical.Net