Expert virologist Professor Marc Mendelson is calling for rapid vaccination to achieve population immunity.
Mendelson, head of the UCT’s Division of Infectious Diseases and HIV Medicine at Groote Schuur Hospital, said that without rapid vaccination of at least two-thirds of the population, South Africa would see yet another wave of cases.
Mendelson was speaking during a virtual Summer School lecture titled “COVID-19 Insights and Lessons”.
According to Mendelson, who was chairperson of the first South African Ministerial Advisory Committee on Covid-19 (Clinicians group), and is now a member of the committee on Covid-19’s second iteration, this pandemic has been the greatest challenge to the public health system that the country’s has ever seen.
“It is associated with a scientific endeavour that we have never seen before. We’re definitely better off a year down the line, but there are a huge number of things that we need to answer. As a country we still face deep problems with severe issues around vaccine strategy, and we haven’t even talked about vaccine denial,” he said.
SA is currently gripped by a second wave of Covid-19 infections and scientists have identified a new variant – 501.V2 – which is driving the infection surge in the country.
Scientists detected a new strain in parts of the country in September last year, which has since dominated most of the infections in the country.
Mendelson said the new strain contains a large number of mutations, and the viruses that scientists continue to genotype have emerged with the same mutations.
These mutations sit in the area of the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2, which antibodies generally recognise. Antibodies and T-cell immunity recognise the same areas, and these recognition sites are critical in our fight against the virus. If the genetic material protein changes and the spike protein changes in this variant, there is a possibility that our immune system won’t work as well,” he explained.
Mendelson said that scientists have many unanswered questions about the new strain, including whether current vaccines would offer protection against it, and whether people previously infected with a different strain would have immunity against the new variant.
He added that scientific evidence was rapidly being worked on by a research consortium across South Africa to find out exactly what’s happening and what the answers would be.
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Source: IOL
