COVID-19: With new variant found in SA, questions raised over vaccine efficacy

It’s not yet clear whether a new COVID-19 variant detected in South Africa affects the protection that current vaccinations offer.

However, officials have reiterated calls for more South Africans to get inoculated as soon as possible.

The National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) on Thursday confirmed that 22 cases of the variant – called B.1.1.529 – had also been detected in Botswana and Hong Kong.

Health Minister Joe Phaahla raised concern over dwindling vaccination figures, adding that coronavirus mutations could be limited if more people were inoculated.

“As South Africans, we are only at 41% and the numbers have been reducing. We’ve been struggling to get 150,000 in a day,” the minister said.

The Health Department’s Acting Director-General Nicholas Crisp said that currently there were 16.5 million vaccine doses in the country, with about 2.5 million more expected in the coming days.

“If we do have an uptake now, we can assure the public there’s plenty of vaccine. We can also assure the public that at the moment we have way more capacity to vaccinate people than we have people coming for vaccination at the moment,” Crisp said.

He said that for some time now the department had been deferring deliveries and sharing with other countries to avoid stockpiling vaccines.

-EWN

In other news – Latest on Man who dragged a girl out of the car – This is what really happened

Social media went abuzz yesterday following the video of a girl who was being dragged out of the Mercedes Benz V-class car.

It ended in tears after the lady wearing a white outfit who goes by the name of Princess Mtetwa on social media platforms was dragged out of the car by the driver. ”Get out of my car, is that how you get money from men,” the driver said as the girl kept on apologizing. Learn More