OREANDA-NEWS. South African scientists have announced a slight increase in the spread of a new variant of coronavirus C.1.2 in recent months. This mutation has already been detected in all nine provinces of the country, the Institute of Infectious Diseases (NICD) in Johannesburg said on Monday, August 30. In addition, this option has already been identified, in particular, in China, Mauritius, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.

According to research, variant C.1.2 has an unusually high number of mutations, which gives it the ability to spread rapidly. It has not yet been established whether the currently available vaccines will be effective against it. According to NICD researcher Penny Moore, C.1.2 is still very poorly distributed, so it is impossible to establish how effective the vaccines are against this variant.

In turn, Karl Lauterbach, a health expert of the German Social Democrats, said on Twitter about a «potentially very dangerous» variant of the coronavirus. At the same time, according to him, it is still unclear whether C.1.2 is more dangerous than the «delta» variant, but its appearance indicates the need to supply Africa with vaccines.