South Africa became the first African country to exceed one million infections on Sunday evening, after the latest figures were announced by its Minister of Health. In the midst of the second wave of the pandemic and while a more transmissible variant of the coronavirus is responsible for a large majority of new cases, the most affected country on the African continent has officially recorded 1,004,413 positive cases and 26,735 deaths.
Deterioration of the situation
As of Sunday at 7 p.m. GMT, Africa had 2,658,646 cases and 62,649 deaths, according to a count made by AFP from reports provided by health authorities. Last week, South Africa recorded an average of 11,700 new infections per day, an increase of 39% from the previous week. For three consecutive days – Wednesday, Thursday and Friday – the number of cases exceeded 14,000 per day, an all-time high in the country. On Saturday and Sunday, that number weakened, falling below the thousand mark.
The government is considering imposing new restrictions and President Cyril Ramaphosa could address the country on television this week, as he has done regularly since the start of the pandemic.
Last week, British authorities announced Wednesday that they had identified two cases of another new strain of the coronavirus, “highly worrying” because “more contagious”, from South Africa. For several days, researchers have been studying this new variant of the coronavirus, which seems to be transmitted faster than older strains, which could explain the suddenness of the second wave in the country, say the researchers who have identified it. “We believe, and all elements point in this direction, that this variant is more transmissible,” Tulio de Oliveira, director of the Krisp research institute, backed by the University of Kwazulu-Natal, told AFP on Wednesday .
In the evening, the South African Minister of Health announced more than 14,000 new cases identified in 24 hours, while these figures oscillated between 8,000 and 10,000 new infections daily in recent days.
More serious cases
With a test positivity rate of 26%, these figures “indicate that the virus continues to spread exponentially,” “much faster than during the first wave,” writes Zwelini Mkhize in a statement. “We will exceed the peak of the first wave in the coming days”, he warns, affirming that the government will thus have to “review the restrictions (in place) and consider new measures to slow this alarming rate” of spread. Importantly, this variant strikes many more young people, in good health and without co-morbid factors. The end of year celebrations and the arrival of school holidays at the beginning of December also contributed to this second wave, the authorities said.
The South African research team, which has sequenced hundreds of samples from across the country since February, noticed the appearance of a particular and dominant variant for more than a month, similar to another UK variant. Basically, “80 to 90%” of the genomes sequenced from the second half of November “exhibited this variant, details Tulio de Oliveira. “We had never seen a single line dominate like this,” or “spread so quickly,” he notes. Until then, “normally”, between 20 and 30 variants circulated at the same time.
“What we know about this new variant called 501.V2 is that it probably emerged in the Nelson Mandela Bay region”, around Port Elizabeth (South-South-East). Then “it spread to Cape Town, the most touristic region in the country”, to the west, but also to the north towards Durban, explains the researcher.
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