(Image source from: healio.com)

The new variants of coronavirus continue to emerge when the whole world is battling to prevent the spread of the deadly virus. A new variant is now detected in South Africa and it is known to be more transmissible and can evade the protection that is provided by the available vaccines for coronavirus. Scientists from National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) and the KwaZulu-Natal Research Innovation and Sequencing Platform (KRISP) in South Africa revealed the news. The variant is named C.1.2 and it is first detected in May this year. The new variant is now traced in China, Mauritius, England, Portugal, New Zealand, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Switzerland. C.1.2 is also mutated substantially when compared to C.1.

The researchers also said that the number of available sequences of this new variant may be an underrepresentation of the frequency and the spread in South Africa. The number of C.1.2 genomes had a consistent increase. C.1.2 also exhibited similar to Beta and Delta variants. The mutation rate of C.1.2 is about 41.8 mutations per year which are twice as fast as the mutation rate of the world. The initial research also confirmed that the vaccines had no impact on the variant of C.1.2. Most of the cases of this new variant are reported in South Africa.

By Siva Kumar