C.1.2, new Virus Variant found in 8 countries, likely to be more infectious

A new variant of SARS-CoV-2, the virus which cause COVID-19, has been detected in South Africa and many other countries globally. As per the new study, the C.1.2 variant may be more infectious and have the ability to evade COVID-19 vaccines currently available. Scientists from National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) and the KwaZulu-Natal Research Innovation and Sequencing Platform (KRISP) in South Africa said the potential variant of interest, C.1.2, was first detected in the country in May this year.

C.1.2 has since been found in China, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mauritius, England, New Zealand, Portugal and Switzerland as of August 13, they said. According to the yet-to-be peer-reviewed study posted on the preprint repository MedRxiv on August 24, C.1.2 has mutated substantially compared to C.1, one of the lineages which dominated the SARS-CoV-2 infections in the first wave in South Africa. The new strain also has more mutations from the original COVID-19 strain that emerged from Wuhan, China, compared to all other Variants of Concern (VOC) or Variants of Interest (VOI) detected across the world so far. The researchers noted that the number of available sequences of C.1.2 may be an underrepresentation of the spread and frequency of the variant in South Africa and around the world. The study found consistent increases in the number of C.1.2 genomes in South Africa each month, rising from 0.2 per cent of genomes sequenced in May to 1.6 per cent in June and then to 2 per cent in July.

According to the study, C.1.2 lineage has a mutation rate of about 41.8 mutations per year, which is about twice as fast as the current global mutation rate of the other variants. Over half of the C.1.2 sequences have 14 mutations, but additional variations have been noticed in some of the sequences.