[Photo by Fusion Medical Animation on Unsplash]
As even countries with substantial vaccination rates such as the U.S., U.K. and Israel continue to fight the Delta variant, a new threat appears to have emerged in South Africa.First spotted in South Africa, the C.1.2 variant is potentially more infectious and resistant to antibodies than Delta. Scientists continue to study the variant’s potential to infect the vaccinated and unvaccinated.
Scientists first spotted C.1.2 in Mpumalanga and Gauteng, two provinces in Eastern South Africa.
Outside of South Africa, researchers have identified the variant in other African nations, New Zealand, the U.K. and mainland Europe.
Also troubling is that the C.1.2 variant is mutating at a rate of 41.8 mutations annually — 1.7 times the rate of other variants of concern, according to a preprint study published in MedRxiv.
Another MedRxiv prepri…