Decoding the data

The negative global narrative of labelling of virus variants based on their place of origin has damaged SA’s reputation, says tourism minister Lindiwe Sisulu.

It’s an important point. When SA sequenced Beta late last year, various destinations slapped travel restrictions on the country as a result of this “SA variant”.

One of the countries to do so was the UK, which placed SA on its travel “red list”.

But data by Discovery chief actuary Emile Stipp is now being used by tourism industry body Satsa to lobby the UK government to remove SA from the list.

One of the issues, says Satsa CEO

David Frost, is that the UK has been using data from December. That suggests Beta is dominant in SA, when in fact Delta is the dominant strain in both SA and the UK.

Stipp’s calculations show that if vaccines work against Beta, the variant won’t spread in the UK, given high vaccination rates in that country. If, however, vaccines did not work against Beta, it would already have spread far and wide in the UK — and it hasn’t.

The only conclusion is that vaccines work against Beta — a finding supported not only by the UK’s own data, but also that of countries where it hasn’t spread.

In any event, Delta is now dominant. And not only do vaccines work well against the variant, but Delta prevalence in the UK may even be higher than in SA, says Stipp.

Given widespread vaccination in the

UK, “there are [now] fewer deaths per infection than there are for flu”, says Stipp.

“Covid is now endemic, and hence it should be thought of as a normal disease [that the UK has] got under control through vaccination. No other conclusion can be reached from the data.”