South Africa faces bigger second wave with faster-spreading virus

A NEW variant of Covid-19 is driving a massive resurgence of the disease in South Africa, with experts warning the country is probably facing a much larger second wave.

Over the summer, the pandemic hit South Africa harder than any nation in the continent. Hospitals were overwhelmed and at its peak, the health authorities were recording more than 13,000 new cases a day.

Now a new variant – 501. V2 – is driving a powerful second wave, making up about 80 to 90 per cent of new cases in Africa’s most industrialised nation.

The strain is different from Britain’s, but similar inasmuch as it is spreading far more rapidly than the original virus.

Prof Salim Abdool Karim, who chairs a governmental ministerial advisory committee on Covid-19, said: “It’s still very early, but at this stage the preliminary data suggest the virus dominating the second wave is spreading faster than the first wave.”

South Africa may see “many more cases” in the new wave than it experienced in the first surge of the disease, warned Prof Karim, adding that when nasal swabs were taken from patients with the new variant, far more viral load was being found in the samples.

“I will just speculate the following: the … higher viral load in these swabs may translate into a higher efficiency of transmission,” he said.

The new South African variant has been traced to Nelson Mandela Bay, in the Eastern Cape, which was the first major urban area to be hit by the country’s second wave. South Africa has recorded about 950,000 cases of the virus since the pandemic began and in excess of 25,000 deaths.

Now the rainbow nation, weary and battered from lockdowns, is seeing about 10,000 new cases a day.

Dr Zweli Mkhize, South Africa’s health minister, warned the nation on Friday that this strongly suggested that the current wave of cases was being driven by the new variant.

Dr Mkhize criticised young partygoers and called on parents, caregivers and the country’s young people “to understand that this is now not just a matter of thinking about others, but you yourselves are now equally at risk of dying from Covid-19.”

Dr Mkhize said that clinicians had been providing “anecdotal evidence” of “l arger proportion of younger patients with no co-morbidities presenting with critical illness”.

However, other experts said that it was too early to tell if the new strain was more deadly. Prof Karim said it was not yet clear if the new variant was causing more deaths.

And Dr John Nkengasong, director of the Africa Centre f or Disease Control and Prevention, based in Addis Ababa, told The Daily Telegraph: “We don’t yet have enough data on this to ascertain if the new strain could be more infectious for children and young adults.”

As of last night, Germany, Switzerland, Israel, Sudan, Mauritius, Turkey and El Salvador had all banned incoming flights from South Africa.