A severe variant of coronavirus has been detected in South Africa which could explain the rapid spread of a second wave affecting younger people, the health minister said today.
Known as the 501.V2 Variant, it was identified by South African researchers and details have been sent to the World Health Organization, Zwelini Mkhize said in a statement.
A team led by the Kwazulu-Natal Research Innovation and Sequencing Platform (KRISP), has sequenced hundreds of virus samples since the pandemic began.
Mr Mkhize said it "noticed that a particular variant has increasingly dominated the findings of the samples collected in the past two months".