GARDEN ROUTE | KAROO NEWS - A new Omicron variant, BA.2.75, also called Centaurus, has been recorded in the UK, US, Australia, Germany and Canada after it was first identified in India early in May.
According to international news reports, the new variant is displacing the previously dominant BA.2 variant in many countries. The World Health Organisation (WHO) said it is monitoring the new variant, but said there have not yet been enough samples to assess the severity of illness it causes.
In South Africa, the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) in its latest Sars-CoV-2 genomic surveillance update on Friday 8 July does not report detection of the variant in our country.
"While BA.1 was the predominant lineage in January (55%), BA.2 dominated in February (86%) and March (78%). Omicron lineages BA.4 and BA.5 increased in prevalence in March (16%), and together were dominant in April (73%), May (94%) and June (96%)," it reported.
A sub-lineage, BA.2.12.1, was detected in South Africa in May and June, at a low prevalence (less than 1%).
A low frequency of the previous variant, Delta, was last detected in May 2022, reported the NICD.
According to the WHO, its ability to track the Covid virus is reducing because surveillance has significantly reduced globally. It said viral evolution and the characteristics of emerging variants "remain uncertain and unpredictable". It said in the absence of the adoption of public health and social measures aimed at reducing transmission, the probability of new, fitter variants emerging increases, "with different degrees of virulence, transmissibility, and immune escape potential".
- As at Monday 11 July, the Garden Route had 73 recorded active Covid-19 cases of which the most were in George (33) and Mossel Bay (21).
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