South African scientists were expecting new variant: Karim
Epidemiologist Professor Salim Abdool Karim says South African scientists expected and prepared for a new variant and fourth wave.
Abdool Karim is one of the experts who took part in a Health Department briefing on Monday following President Cyril Ramaphosa's address on Sunday night.
"Let me just make this very clear. We were not caught with our pants down. We expected and prepared for a new variant and a fourth wave.
"What did we do? Well, government invested to together with many other agencies in building the capacity to do genomic sequencing in Africa. That investment has now paid dividends, they have delivered. They have given us the best fighting chance by giving us evidence early."
He says at this stage, they do not know much about the Omicron or its behaviour.
"What we can do is we can extrapolate based on the mutations we are seeing. There are a whole range of mutations that we know well. We know them well because they are already in the Alpha, Beta, Gama and Delta variant.
"We know that some of the mutations we see in this particular variant are also in the Delta variant near the furin cleavage side, so they enhance transmissibility.
"We know that this variant had some mutations similar to the Beta and Gama variants that are responsible for some level of immune escape.
"But there are some mutations in this particular variant that we have just only slight information about. We don't really know fully well what they do, but we some inkling and then there are a whole mutations we have no idea what they do."
Karim says the fact that the new Covid-19 variant was picked up so early is a scientific success.
Omicron was identified by South African scientists last week.
He says the scientific success now needs to be turned into a response success.
Karim says there's been a global overreaction to the variant.
Listen below:
