Early Action by British Scientists Helped Detect COVID-19 Mutations msn.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from msn.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
A third wave could be only three to four months away, amidst a new, more infectious SARS-CoV-2 variant (the virus that causes Covid-19), 501Y.V2, that emerged during our second wave and is now dominant in South Africa. The new variant has also changed itself in such a way that it can evade the antibodies that our bodies produce in response to the original version of the virus.
We’ve created an interactive map to show you how SARS-CoV-2 spread through South Africa between September 2020 and January 2021 (during this time the new variant, 501Y.V2, became dominant).
Last week, South Africa started to roll-out Johnson & Johnson vaccines that are 85% effective in protecting against severe Covid disease (the type of Covid that makes people end up in hospital or die).
Hindsight is 2020: Three lessons from our second wave news24.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from news24.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
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This week public health officials confirmed Connecticut’s first case of a coronavirus variant originally detected in South Africa. But the extent to which Connecticut is screening for COVID variants remains unknown. The state public health lab lacks the capacity to test for COVID variants, and while the state is working with two outside labs to conduct variant surveillance, it has formalized no contracts to outline the parameters of that work.
The state is working with The Jackson Laboratory and Yale to monitor the presence in Connecticut of a pool of COVID-19 variants that are emerging globally.
So far, both the United Kingdom (B.1.1.7) variant, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said is more contagious, and the South African (B.1.351) variant have been detected in Connecticut residents.