Due to Delta Variant Spread, South Africa Faces New Lockdown

INA – SOURCES
 
South Africa’s acting health minister said the Delta coronavirus variant is dominant in the country, fueling a third wave of infections that may prompt the government to tighten lockdown restrictions further.
 
The current resurgence of the disease could be worse than the second wave after studies discovered the prevalence of the new strain first detected in India, Mmamoloko Kubayi-Ngubane said in an online news conference on Saturday.
The new variant is driving infections in South Africa’s commercial hub of Gauteng, she said.
 
“We have a new variant that is prevalent in the country,” Kubayi-Ngubane said. “This new variant is called Delta.”
 
The Delta variant that’s been running rampant in South Africa is 30% to 60% more transmissible than other strains, including the Beta variant, first identified in the African nation last year, Richard Lessells, an infectious diseases specialist at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, said at the same briefing.