SA is buckling under the weight of the Delta variant that has fuelled the Covid-19 third wave, but now another variant known as Lambda — and that's possibly even more transmissible — has surfaced.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), the Lambda variant was first detected in Peru but quickly spread to more than 30 countries, including Australia and the United Kingdom.
The WHO has it pegged as a “variant of interest” — as opposed to a “variant of concern” — but this could change quickly as scientists are alarmed by its unusual mutations.
Prof Barry Schoub, who heads the vaccine unit of the ministerial advisory committee on Covid-19, said on Tuesday night that Lambda “has not been detected in SA”.
According to the Financial Times, Lambda has a “unique pattern of seven mutations in the spike protein that the virus uses to infect human cells”, and that “researchers are particularly intrigued by one mutation called L452Q, which is similar to the L452R mutation believed to contribute to the high infectiousness of the Delta variant”.