By Kaveesha Fernando
CAPE TOWN, South Africa (CWBN)_ South Africa’s Minister for Higher Education, Science and Innovation Dr Blade Nzimande 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). The announcement comes amidst an alarming rise in new COVID-19 cases owing to the discovery of the presence of the new strain of COVID-19 which was identified just last week.
A government statement released today (December 22) quotes South Africa’s Health Minister Dr Zweli Mkhize as stating that South Africa’s genomics team led by the KwaZulu-Natal Research Innovation and Sequencing Platform (KRISP) has sequenced hundreds of samples from across the country since the beginning of the pandemic in March. “They noticed that a particular variant has increasingly dominated the findings of the samples collected in the past two months. The evidence that has been collated, therefore, strongly suggests that the current second wave we are experiencing is being driven by this new variant,” said the Minister, according to today’s release.
The South African Government News Agency also revealed today that South Africa recorded close to 10 000 new cases of COVID-19 and 152 deaths on Sunday, which pushed the total number of COVID-19 cases to close to 1 million and the total death toll to almost 25 000.
The agency claims that South Africa alerted the rest of the world to the presence of a new variant of COVID-19. “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,” a media release issued today stated. The release quoted South Africa’s Health Minister as stating that: “This is the calibre of our own scientists here in South Africa and we are extremely proud to once again demonstrate leadership in the COVID-19 response on a world stage”.
However, these claims might be false – reputed international media outlets, world leaders and experts all seem to consider the virus as having originated in the UK and not in South Africa.
