A new “doomsday” Covid variant has been discovered, with health experts fearing it moves nearly “twice as fast” as the deadly Delta strain.
The new variant, known as C. 1.2, first emerged in South Africa but has also been detected in England, China, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mauritius, New Zealand, Portugal and Switzerland.
“It gets worse with C12. It has a 1.7x to 1.8x faster mutation rate than the average of all other variants. The authors note this coincides with the emergence pattern of other really bad VOC variants.“Consider this a hurricane warning on the next potential variant.” Genetic variants of SARS-CoV-2 are not new. They have been emerging and circulating around the world throughout the Covid-19 pandemic.
The original Alpha strain of Covid that emerged in the United Kingdom and was previously regarded as the most transmissible before Delta arrived is another. “There are currently four Variants Of Concern and four Variants of Interest in circulation globally,’’ the South African research paper states.
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