Scientists monitoring new variant in South Africa
South Africa鈥檚 scientists have detected what is thought could be a new variant of Covid-19, known as "C.1.2."
More than 80,000 people have died from coronavirus in South Africa, which is recording the highest number of infections on the continent.
Professor Wolfgang Preiser is head of the division of medical virology at South Africa's Stellenbosch University.
He told Newsday: 鈥淲e haven't officially declared it a variant yet. It is still a lineage. What concerns us is that it has a combination of different mutations and changes that we are seeing in other variants of concern.鈥�
Professor Preiser said we don鈥檛 know yet if it is more infectious.
鈥淢y initial thoughts are that this is a concern. In South Africa the vast majority of people remain unvaccinated. There is a lot of virus replication going on and this is exactly the conditions under which you see the emergence of new variants.鈥�
Photo: A woman receives the vaccine in her car near Pretoria (Getty Images)
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