On Friday, Zweli Mkhize announced the new COVID-19 variant that is causing Mzansi’s Coronavirus second wave. Mzansi refers to it as Covid VSOP. The variant SARS-COV-2, which is termed 501.V2 variant is equally risky as COVID-19.
The new variant has been identified by South Africa’s genomics scientists.
“This genomics team, led by the Kwazulu-Natal Research Innovation and Sequencing Platform, or KRISP, has sequenced hundreds of samples from across the country since the beginning of the pandemic in March. They noticed that a particular variant has increasingly dominated the findings of the samples collected in the past two months.”
In the announcement made Mkhize said:
Zweli, who is the South African health minister, said in the announcement that the new variant was first identified in Nelson Mandela Bay. There are more and more young people who are testing positive.
Clinicians have been providing anecdotal evidence of a shift in the clinical epidemiological picture- in particular noting that they are seeing a larger proportion of younger patients with no co-morbidities presenting with a critical illness. #SARSCOV2MediaBriefing
https://twitter.com/DrZweliMkhize/status/1339970259332325383 (Mkhize’s Twitter Account)
COVID-19 is a disease, not a virus. SARS-CoV-2 is a virus.