With yet another Covid variant detected in SA — exhibiting more mutations than any other — experts say vaccination remains critical to controlling the pandemic.
New variants are inevitable as the virus continues to spread and mutate.
The latest, C.1.2., was first detected in SA in May and has been identified in all nine provinces. It has also been found in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mauritius, New Zealand, Portugal, the UK, Switzerland and China.
Prof Barry Schoub, vaccines chair on the Ministerial Advisory Committee, tells the FM that immunisation is the only way to prevent future mutations of the virus.
SA’s world-class genomic surveillance team, consisting of researchers from the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) and the KwaZulu-Natal Research Innovation & Sequencing Platform, study random samples of the virus from private and provincial sites that do routine Covid testing. This lets the team identify variants that are spreading and developing mutations that could make them more contagious or more likely to shrug off vaccines.
The NICD says the Delta variant remains the dominant one in SA, though C.1.2. is slowly gaining ground.
Dr Jinal Bhiman, co-author of a local preliminary study on the new variant, says it was flagged for attention because it has a number of overlapping mutations with other variants — including some that make it highly transmissible — and it also has a significant number of unique mutations.
It is a "potential" variant of interest and/or concern, but has not yet been formally classified as such by the World Health Organisation.
Another co-author, Prof Penny Moore, says there is no clear evidence as yet that C.1.2. is more transmissible than Delta, the variant that is driving SA’s third wave. While studies are still being conducted to determine the potency of vaccines against C.1.2., Moore says scientists do have some understanding of how it will behave in relation to vaccines.
"We have seen many variants emerge that show reduced sensitivity to antibodies that vaccines trigger… but all [vaccines] manage to maintain efficacy against severe illness or death … We are confident that the vaccines rolled out in SA will continue to protect against severe illness and death," she says.
Prof Shabir Madhi, a leading scientist and vaccinologist at Wits University, says there is no clinical evidence yet to suggest the new variant is any more transmissible than Delta or more "evasive" than the Beta variant against vaccines. He, too, thinks vaccines will work as well against it as they did against the Beta variant — not necessarily stopping infection but preventing death and severe illness.
The price of vigilance
The irony here is that SA’s scrupulous genomic surveillance could be contributing to the continued international travel restrictions targeting SA — the hype and media headlines that greet research on new variants mean SA is viewed as an unsafe destination.
The Covid mutations detected in SA could prolong the country’s designation as a "red list" destination by the UK — SA’s biggest travel market. Normally, more than 400,000 Brits visit annually.
Most are staying away now because a trip to SA means they have to spend 10 days quarantined in a UK hotel at a cost of more than £2,000 (about R40,000). The impact on the travel industry has been devastating.
SA was placed on the red list when the Beta variant was detected, but new data shows the AstraZeneca vaccine used in the UK protects against severe illness from this variant.
Satsa, an industry body promoting inbound tourism, has been working since May to have SA taken off the red list and, funded by donations from local hotels, has hired UK lobby groups to work with British politicians and media.
Gillian Saunders, a tourism and hospitality adviser, praises SA’s "wonderful" scientists. But she says their work on variants and the way SA is portrayed when new variants are discovered is creating "headaches for the travel industry".
Tourism contributed 3% to GDP in 2018.
In response to Satsa, the UK government recently said its "traffic light" system for classifying travel destinations is updated every three weeks. The latest review on August 4 left SA in the red zone because the country "continues to present a high public health risk to the UK from known variants of concern".
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