By Kaveesha Fernando
CAPE TOWN, South Africa (CWBN)_ British Health Secretary Matt Hancock praised South Africa for alerting the UK for to the presence of a new variant of COVID-19. “Thanks to the impressive genomic capability of the South Africans, we’ve detected two cases of another new variant of coronavirus here in the UK,” Hancock stated on Wednesday at a media briefing. He also announced that the UK will be imposing travel restrictions on South Africa.
Several travellers have been left stranded in South Africa owing to fresh travel restrictions as nations across the globe aim to prevent the novel strains of COVID-19 from entering their borders.
The South African government recently announced that South Africa’s Department of Science and Innovation will provide R25 million (around USD1.7 million) towards the KwaZulu-Natal Research Innovation and Sequencing Platform (KRISP) in a bid to combat the spread of COVID-19 owing to the new strain scientists discovered in the African nation.
A government media release issued on Monday (December 21) praised the efforts of South African scientists who discovered the new strain. “The team at KRISP, led by Professor Tulio de Oliviera, shared its findings with the World Health Organisation and the scientific community at large. Through KRISP sharing its findings, the UK was alerted to South Africa’s variant, upon which the UK then studied their own samples and found that a similar mutation on the same site that is the 501 site was the variant that was driving the resurgence in London,” the media release stated.
The South African government recently made a down payment for the COVID-19 vaccine in order to vaccinate 10% of the nation’s population. South Africa is the hardest-hit nation in Africa with regards to the pandemic. The country is nearing 10 million cases, while the second-worst affected country, Morocco, is yet to pass the 5 million mark. South African authorities have blamed the carelessness of the youth and initiated crackdowns which aimed to identify those who violated the nation’s health and safety guidelines.
