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Dec
01
2021
By The African Mirror
How South African scientists spotted the Omicron COVID variant

How South African scientists spotted the Omicron COVID variant

COVID-19
TIM COCKS ON Friday, November 19, Raquel Viana, Head of Science at one of South Africa's biggest private testing labs, sequenced the genes on eight coronavirus samples - and got the shock of her life. The samples, tested in the Lancet laboratory, all bore a large number of mutations, especially on the spike protein that the virus uses to enter human cells. "I was quite shocked at what I was seeing. I questioned whether something had gone wrong in the process," she told Reuters, a thought that quickly gave way to "a sinking feeling that the samples were going to…
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Dec
01
2021
By The African Mirror
No cruise ship cheer for Cape Town tourism amid Omicron alarm

No cruise ship cheer for Cape Town tourism amid Omicron alarm

NEWS
WENDELL ROELF THE docking of the Europa passenger liner in Cape Town on Tuesday was meant to be a ribbon-cutting celebration marking the official start of the cruise ship season in South Africa's top tourist hub, the first since the COVID-19 pandemic hit. But international travel curbs on southern Africa, where the new Omicron coronavirus variant was first identified, have blown expectations of a bumper tourist season out of the water. The multi-storey, white luxury liner is the first to dock at Cape Town since South Africa imposed a total ban on all cruise ships entering local ports in March…
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Dec
01
2021
By The African Mirror
The race is on to trace the new COVID-19 variant

The race is on to trace the new COVID-19 variant

COVID-19
ALISTAIR SMOUT, FRANCESCO GUARASCIO and CHEN LIN GOVERNMENTS around the world are urgently scouring databases for recent cases of COVID-19 infections, screening travellers and decoding the viral genomes of the new variant as they try to measure how far it has spread. The pace of the work highlights the pressure on governments and public health authorities to decide quickly whether they need to take unpopular, economically damaging steps to curb Omicron's spread. Data shows it was circulating before it was officially identified in southern Africa last week and it has since been detected in more than a dozen countries. Work…
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