Strong natural immunity will likely see SA through new ‘most transmissible’ Covid sub-variant —Phaahla

South Africa’s high population immunity against Covid-19 is likely to see the country through the wave of the new Omicron sub-variant, according to health minister Joe Phaahla.

Briefing journalists on Tuesday, Phaahla said relatively high population immunity is one of the reasons why government will not impose travel restrictions nor reintroduce tough Covid-19 restrictions.

Phaahla’s briefing follows the discovery of the most transmittable sub-variant, dubbed “Kraken”, which is circulating in at least 28 countries and was detected in South Africa at the weekend.

The minister said: “We believe the fact that the dominant variant of concern in China and in the world remains Omicron, and that the immunity of South Africans from vaccination and natural immunity is still very strong, puts us in a better position and at less risk. That is why we have so far not seen major changes in our epidemiology in terms of the rates of infection, admissions to hospital and rates of fatality from the Covid-19 pandemic.”

Phaahla said after consultation with t role players, including the Covid-19 ministerial advisory committees and the World Health Organization, “the advice we have received is there is no need to impose any travel restrictions on any country, including the People’s Republic of China, and we do not need to reimpose in our own country.”

He said health authorities had been advised, among other things, to increase the rate of testing, particularly of those who experience Covid-19 and flu-like symptoms such as fever, headache, tiredness, loss of appetite and at times loss of taste and diarrhoea.

Following the discovery of the new sub-variant XBB.1.5 through genome sequencing on January 7, Phaahla said government has advised health practitioners, including in the private sector, to test for Covid-19 through an antigen test or PCR test.

“If the antigen test is positive, a PCR confirmatory test needs to be done. For every positive PCR test, a specimen must be sent to the National Health Laboratory Service so it can be forwarded to our genomic sequencing network. At present, part of our challenge is that the number of tests and pool of sequencing specimens available for sequencing is very small. We need to increase the pool for  testing and sequencing purposes.”

In addition to testing local waste water, Phaahla said scientists will test waste water on aircraft coming from high risk countries such as China, where cases have been increasing exponentially following the scrapping of its zero-Covid-19 policy last month,

As a result of increasing cases there, a number of countries imposed special requirements for travellers coming from China while some countries such as Canada, UK, Spain, Italy and India require a negative PCR test of less than 48 hours from those travelling from China. Morocco remains the only country that has imposed an outright travel ban on travellers coming from China.

Phaahla said he has sent letters to all provinces and laboratories to increase the levels of testing, and the country will up its vaccination campaign with the vaccination ministerial advisory committee set to make adjustments to qualification for booster’ ages and timelines between boosters. All adults who have not been vaccinated in the past six  months will be eligible for vaccination.

“These measures were presented to the national coronavirus command council, chaired by the president [Cyril Ramaphosa], early this morning. It has approved all these measures and agrees there is no need to bring in restrictions for travellers or for the country. Vaccination remains the bedrock to protect us against any variant, not travel restrictions or new restrictions at this stage.”

Dr Michelle Groome, who head the division of public health surveillance and response at the National Institute for Communicable Diseases), said there is no need to panic, and the new variant was not unexpected.

While the sub-variant may become dominant in other parts of the world where it is circulating, this doesn’t mean it will become a dominant variant locally

“It's been in the US since October. The proportion is increasing there with some  data sources saying it may be up to 40%. While it may become the dominant variant there, it does not mean it will become the dominant variant elsewhere. We need to realise each country is different.”

“We have very high levels of population immunity and there are many in in our country who've been exposed to the different sub-variants of Omicron since it was first detected at the end of 2021. Although there is some evidence it may be slightly more transmissible than the ones at the moment, this evidence is relatively weak. However, even if there's a small increase in transmissibility, as with other variants, we have seen vaccination and prior infection and high levels of population immunity provide protection against severe disease,” Groome said.

Deputy health minister Sibongiseni Dhlomo said with schools set to reopen and many heading back to work, the wearing of masks will remain optional.

Dhlomo said there will be no need for booster shots for children between the ages of 12 and 18 years as this remains a low-risk group.