New COVID-19 Variant Detected In South Africa

According to the study, a new variant of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, has been detected in South Africa and many other places across the world, which might be more transmissible and evade vaccination protection.
The potential variant of interest, C.1.2, was first detected in South Africa in May this year, according to scientists from the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) and the KwaZulu-Natal Research Innovation and Sequencing Platform (KRISP).
As of August, C.1.2 has been detected in China, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mauritius, England, New Zealand, Portugal, and Switzerland.C.1.2 has changed significantly compared to C.1, one of the lineages that dominated SARS-CoV-2 infections in the initial wave in South Africa, according to a study published on the online site MedRxiv on August 24.
According to the researchers, the new variation contains more mutations than previous variants of concern (VOCs) or variants of interest (VOIs) discovered thus far throughout the world. They speculated that the number of accessible C.1.2 sequences may be an underestimation of the variant’s spread and frequency in South Africa and throughout the world. The number of C.1.2 genomes sequenced in South Africa increased month after month, going from 0.2 percent in May to 1.6 percent in June, and then to 2 percent in July, according to the research.