ONE OF South Africa’s leading virologists and member of the country’s Network for Genomic Surveillance in South Africa (NGS-SA), Carolyn Williamson, still remembers the telephone call in November 2020. “A worried Tulio de Olivera, head of NGS-SA, called me to inform on his discovery of a new variant of the novel coronavirus causing COVID-19. He told me about this variant’s unexpected number of mutations in the spike protein that the virus uses to infect human cells,” he recalls. ngssa had identified the variant, later named 501y.V2, through analysis of 2,882 whole genomes from South Africa. Within a month of the variant's discovery in the Eastern Cape Province of the country, COVID-19 cases spiked. The new variant is up to 50 percent more transmissible, say experts. “By December, this virus variant had essentially replaced the previously circulating ones,” Williamson told Down To Earth (dte). The country formally declared this as the second wave of the pandemic in December 2020. After further investigations, experts estimated that the new wave caused by the variant actually started around October 2020. It was notably rapid in parts of the Eastern Cape, Western Cape and KwaZuluNatal Provinces.
By January 2021, the second wave turned widespread and deadly. According to the World Bank’s Africa Pulse report, released on March 31, 2021, “The number of confirmed cases in South Africa increased from 14,109 per million people on December 10, 2020 to a peak of 24,435 per million people on January 30, 2021. Meanwhile, fatalities grew from 384 per million people to 741 per million people over the same time period.” This was the highest among the 54 African countries.
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة April 16, 2021 من Down To Earth.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك ? تسجيل الدخول
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة April 16, 2021 من Down To Earth.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك? تسجيل الدخول
In leading role again
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One Nation One Subscription comes at a huge cost
As top US universities scrap big deals with top scientific publishers, India’s ONOS scheme seems flawed and outdated
Return of Rambhog
Bid to revive and sell the aromatic indigenous paddy variety has led to substantial profits for farmers in Uttar Pradesh's Terai region
Scarred by mining
Natural springs of Kashmir drying up due to illegal riverbed mining
Human-to-human spread a mutation away
CANADA IN mid-November confirmed its first human case of avian influenza, with a teenager in the British Columbia being hospitalised after contracting the H5N1 virus that causes the disease. The patient developed a severe form of the disease, also called bird flu, and had respiratory issues. There was no known cause of transmission.
True rehabilitation
Residents of Madhya Pradesh's Kakdi village take relocation as an opportunity to undertake afforestation, develop sustainable practices
INESCAPABLE THREAT
Chemical pollution is the most underrated and underreported risk of the 21st century that threatens all species and regions
THAT NIGHT, 40 YEARS AGO
Bhopal gas disaster is a tragedy that people continue to face
A JOKE, INDEED
A CONFERENCE OF IRRESPONSIBLE PARTIES THAT CREATED AN OPTICAL ILLUSION TO THE REALITY OF A NEW CLIMATE
THINGS FALL APART
THE WORLD HAS MADE PROGRESS IN MITIGATING EMISSIONS AND ADAPTING TO CLIMATE IMPACTS. BUT THE PROGRESS REMAINS GROSSLY INADEQUATE
