NATIONAL NEWS - The National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) said in a statement on Monday 30 August that vaccination should still offer protection against hospitalisation and death in the case of infection with the new coronavirus variant, C.1.2.
The variant was first identified in South Africa in May this year and has so far also been detected in China, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mauritius, England, New Zealand, Portugal and Switzerland.
According to the NICD, the C.1.2 lineage shares a few common mutations with the beta and delta variants, but has a number of additional mutations.
Prof Penny Moore of the NICD said although it is expected that C.1.2 will be able to partially evade the immune response, the Covid-19 vaccines will still offer high levels of protection against hospitalisation and death. She said protection from severe disease is mediated by a separate arm of the immune system, namely T-cells, which are much more tolerant of mutations. "They maintain almost all of their activity against the variants that we have so far.
"This is the reason why we remain fairly confident that, despite the number of increased mutations in this variant, the vaccines that we have will still protect against severe disease."
The Network of Genomic Surveillance South Africa (NGS-SA) will continue to monitor the frequency of the variant and tests on the impact of the mutations are underway. Various local laboratories are testing the effectiveness of the current vaccines against the variant.
Thus far the virus has not fulfilled the World Health Organisation (WHO) criteria for variants of concern (VOC) or variants of interest (VOI).
A pre-print paper (published on MedRxiv) on a study by scientists from the NICD and the KwaZulu-Natal Research Innovation and Sequencing Platform (Krisp) states that the new variant evolved from C.1, one of the lineages that dominated the first wave of infections in South Africa. The mutations were unexpected as C.1 was last detected in January 2021. According to the scientists, C.1.2 is "highly mutated beyond C.1 and all other VOCs and VOIs globally, with between 44 and 59 mutations away from the original Wuhan Hu-1 virus".
The number of C.1.2 genomes in South Africa is also increasing monthly. In May, C.1.2 accounted for 0,2% of genomes sequenced, in June 1,6% and in July 2%. This is similar to the increases seen in beta and delta in South Africa during early detection.
According to the scientists, C.1.2 contains multiple substitutions and deletions within the spike protein, a circumstance that has been observed in other VOCs and is associated with increased transmissibility and reduced sensitivity to neutralisation. However, there is greater concern over a number of additional mutations which are also likely to impact neutralisation sensitivity.
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