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22 Containers Distributed To Morgues As Covid Deaths Soar In South Africa
Afrikaanse Verbond Begrafnis Ondernemings Beperk (AVBOB) has installed 22 containers at Johannesburg morgues to help cope with a rising tide of Covid-19 deaths. Each container is said to store up to 40 corpses, keeping them at a constant zero degrees Celsius (32 degrees Fahrenheit) South Africa is Africa’s worst-hit country in the pandemic, recording an…
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Joe Biden Reinstates Travel Ban, Includes South Africa
U.S. President Joe Biden on Monday reinstated COVID-19 travel restrictions to Brazil, Ireland, the United Kingdom and 26 European countries. He also added South Africa to the list. The travel ban also suspends entry to nearly all foreign nationals who have been in any of the countries on the restricted list at any point during…
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Scientists Say South African Covid-19 Variant May Escape Antibodies And Cause Reinfection
New study suggests that the new variant of the coronavirus ‘501Y.V2’ has mutations in nine parts of its spike protein, which enables it to infect human cells as it can likely escape “neutralization” by antibodies from recovered COVID-19 patients. According to the yet-to-be peer reviewed study, published in the preprint platform BioRxiv, this new variant of the…
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UK Detects 77 Cases Of South African Covid-19 Strain
Health Secretary Matt Hancock announced that experts have discovered 77 cases of the South African Covid-19 variant through the testing of people who had recently travelled. The new variants had been identified because both Brazil and South Africa had ‘decent-sized’ genomic sequencing programmes but other countries were less well covered, he said. “The new variant…
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Panama confirms first case of South African Covid-19 variant
Ministry of Health officials in Panama has announced the country has recorded its first positive case of the South African mutant strain of coronavirus known as ‘501Y.V2’. “This is a 40-year-old passenger, born in Zimbabwe, who entered the country on January 5 from South Africa and had previously made a stop over in the Netherlands…