UK’s Covid-19 variant detected in SA Updated
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The Network for Genomic Surveillance in South Africa says it s found its first case of the UK variant of the coronavirus in South Africa.
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Kwazulu-Natal Research Innovation and Sequencing Platform director, Professor Tulio de Oliveira, announced at a World Health Organisation Africa Covid-19 press briefing on Thursday.
We have just reported the first imported case of B.1.1.7, that is the variant of concern in the UK, said de Oliveira
The Network for Genomic Surveillance in South Africa (NGS-SA) would like to report the first genome of B.1.1.7 (501Y.V1) in South Africa. We are finalizing the assembly of the genome and will deposit soon at GISAID. This was produced by the Stellenbosch University and NHLS. Tulio de Oliveira (@Tuliodna) January 28, 2021
KZN scientist finds new way of growing new Covid-19 variant in groundbreaking research
By Staff Reporter
SILINDILE NYATHIKAZI
Durban - A DURBAN medical student at the University of KwaZulu-Natal Nelson Mandela School of Medicine and aspiring virologist has come up with a creative way of growing the South African Covid-19 variant.
Where the virus is usually grown in cells that were isolated from monkeys, this time Sandile Cele found that the new variant (called 501Y.V2) did not grow in these cells and had to try a different way.
“I figured out that I had to first use a human cell line to grow it, and then use these infected cells to infect the monkey cell line,” said Cele.
New Covid variant threatens to overwhelm southern Africa s hospitals
Clinics run out of beds and oxygen as more transmissible strain spreads throughout the continent
Health care workers at a temporary ward at Steve Biko hospital in Pretoria
Credit: Phill Magakoe/Reuters
Nataley tried everything she could to save her mother-in-law when the 59-year-old began struggling to breathe just after Christmas. Nataley drove her from clinic to clinic around Durban, South Africa’s third-largest city, searching for oxygen.
But exhausted nurses and doctors kept turning them away. The new variant of Covid-19 had hit South Africa’s healthcare system like a speeding train the clinics had no oxygen left or were full of younger patients in a worse condition.
The role of genomic sequencing in the COVID-19 pandemic
Appeared in BioNews 1080
Monitoring of the COVID-19 pandemic has relied heavily on genomic sequencing, but experts warn more needs to be done to control the virus.
Advances in genomics have allowed analysis of the pandemic on a previously unimaginable scale. As well as identifying new virus variants, SARS-CoV-2 genome sequencing has revealed the origin of new strains and even identified transmission chains from person to person. Genomic epidemiology has come of age during this pandemic, Professor Oliver Pybus, from the University of Oxford, told Nature. Professor Pybus himself recently published a study in the journal Science, where sequencing showed that the virus was imported over 1000 times prior to the first UK lockdown in March 2020 (see BioNews 1079).
WHO calls for new names for Covid variants to avoid country stigma
Countries that conduct a lot of genetic sequencing are more likely to find new strains, say experts
12 January 2021 • 6:40pm
New Covid variants have been detected all around the world
Credit: Science Photo Library
The World Health Organization is planning a naming system for new Covid-19 variants to avoid stigmatising countries that discover new strains of the disease.
In the last few weeks new variants have been identified all over the world - including in the UK, South Africa, Brazil and Russia - that are now taking over the previous dominant strains.