The South African Health Products Regulatory Authority (SAHPRA) Chair, Professor Helen Rees says the new COVID-19 variant, the C.1.2 variant, is being monitored to ensure that vaccines remain effective against it.
SAHPRA appeared before Parliament’s Health Committee on Wednesday to discuss the efficacy of vaccines, among other things.
The latest variant, which has been found in eight provinces, has also been detected elsewhere in the world.
“The mutation suggests it could be more transmissible or evading our immune system,” says Rees.
She says this is why they are “watching it closely”.
Vaccines will mitigate against death
The NICD’s Professor Penny Moore says several labs in the country are assessing the efficacy of vaccines against C.1.2.
“What that entails is taking blood from people who have been vaccinated and also from people who have been infected with COVID-19. We grow the virus C.1.2 in a lab and we actually test the antibodies from those people against the virus to access that. Protection from severe disease is mediated by a separate arm of the immune system, T- cells.”
NICD’s Acting Executive Director Professor Adrian Puren on the C.1.2 COVID-19 variant discovered in SA:
VIDEO: Director of KRISP at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Prof Tulio Oliveira discusses new mutation of the COVID-19 virus circulating in SA:
Additional reporting by Prabashini Moodley.
