South Africa has mutated into Covid-19, and many countries have issued flight bans!

[Wan Yu, correspondent of Global Times in South Africa] The second wave of COVID-19 epidemic in South Africa is threatening. Due to the recent discovery of the mutated COVID-19 virus, many countries began to restrict flights from South Africa. As of the 23rd, eight countries, including Germany, Turkey, Israel and Switzerland, have announced the ban on South African flights.

According to the British "Guardian" reported on the 22nd, South Africa reported this new mutant virus for the first time on the 18th, and named it "501.V2". Regarding whether this new strain was formed in South Africa, South African Health Minister Mukez said that up to now, South African medical experts have not found out the source of the mutated virus. It was first discovered in eastern cape, South Africa, and then spread to the surrounding areas, but it is impossible to identify that the mutated virus originated in East Cape Province.

Mukez said that since the epidemic of new coronary pneumonia in South Africa in March, it has been caused by KwaZulu — The team led by natal province Research Innovation and Sequencing Platform has sequenced hundreds of virus samples, and they have noticed that in the past two months, a specific mutant virus has become more and more dominant. Karim, co-chairman of the South African Covid-19 Task Force, said that 80%-90% of the Covid-19 samples they have obtained are this variant. Clinical data show that more patients are young people without basic diseases, but they show more serious symptoms than those infected with Covid-19 before.

The WHO said on the 21st that although the varieties of Covid-19 discovered in South Africa appeared almost at the same time as those discovered in Britain, they were unrelated varieties and had nothing to do with each other.

The peak of the first round of epidemic in South Africa occurred in July and August, with nearly 14,000 new confirmed cases every day, and then gradually declined. In September, the number of new confirmed cases decreased to about 2,000, but it began to increase again in November, and more than 10,000 new confirmed cases were added in a single day on December 19th. According to medical experts, the second wave of COVID-19 epidemic in South Africa is related to the increased social gathering activities at the end of the year, which caused widespread community spread. After the second wave of epidemic broke out, the South African government strengthened the blockade of beaches, but it did not raise the national blockade level. In Johannesburg, the Global Times reporter saw that local restaurants and cafes were still open normally. In Cape Town, a tourist resort, local law enforcement agencies send a large number of personnel to patrol the beach, and those who go to the beach in violation of regulations will be fined heavily and may even be imprisoned.

According to the data released by the South African Ministry of Health on the 22nd, there were 9,501 new confirmed cases in COVID-19, with a total of 940,212 confirmed cases, 339 new deaths and 25,246 cumulative deaths. The South African government announced on the 22nd that it had paid a down payment of $19.2 million to the Global Alliance for Vaccine Immunization (GAVI) to ensure South Africa’s entry into the WHO COVID-19 Vaccine Implementation Plan.