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The COVID-19 variant 501Y.V2, to give it its proper name, is now best known around the world as ‘the South African variant’.

Late last year, as COVID-19 cases and deaths soared across South Africa, and we entered a harder form of lockdown once more, scientists here at home first identified the presence of the variant.

Since then, 501Y.V2 has been detected in at least 30 other countries, and international media coverage of the mutation has largely pointed the finger at South Africa as being the place of origin.

Prof Salim Abdool Karim, the co-chairperson of the ministerial advisory committee (MAC), has had enough. Earlier this week, during an appearance on CNN, he made a point of stressing why calling it ‘the South African variant’ is inappropriate:

“It’s inappropriate to call it ‘The South African variant’ ☺️☺️”

😍😍😍😍 https://t.co/AlTFCYkmPY pic.twitter.com/GpWrxrqEuZ

— Thato (@ThatoD01) February 3, 2021

It is a shorthand that has become widely used (ourselves included), but now we’re effectively being punished, or at least viewed negatively by many around the world, because of the outstanding work of our scientists.

Via TimesLIVE, here’s Prof Tulio de Oliveira, director of the KZN Research and Innovation Sequencing Platform (Krisp):

“Health ministries across the world have said SA has the worst variant in the world, and they associate our country with the name of the variant. It could easily have emerged elsewhere but it’s only thanks to our excellent genomic surveillance here in SA that we know more about it.”

Consider this – the infamous Spanish Flu pandemic, which swept the globe in 1918 and is estimated to have killed as many as 50 million people, actually originated in America.

It was first detected in Spain, though, and the name stuck.

Not that the Yanks, or at least the federal government under Donald Trump, learnt much about developing a surveillance system that would allow researchers to watch for dangerous mutations.

Here’s The Guardian:

The federal government has had its “head in the sand”, failing to develop a coordinated surveillance system for tracking the genetic footprints of the virus, according to academic researchers, scientific panelists and private entrepreneurs, who say they have been urging US officials for months to make better use of the hi-tech resources already sitting in labs around the country.

…by [last] Friday the US had only plotted and shared the genetic sequences of 0.3% of its coronavirus cases, ranking 30th in the world, behind countries including Portugal, Latvia and Sierra Leone.

Can’t have a mutation labelled ‘the US variant’ if you don’t identify it, right?

If you’ve received a message from friends or family abroad, sounding panicked and asking about how you’re handling 501Y.V2, you’re not alone.

Some of the international media coverage has played to the trope of ‘deep, dark Africa’ in a big way:

I also had friends & colleagues in the US and UK, checking on me! My mom, who was a nurse in Scotland for 10 years, had her now retired friends calling and asking her to move back to the UK because South Africa’s situation is “catastrophic.” https://t.co/JGau7JUjyG

— Redi Tlhabi (@RediTlhabi) February 4, 2021

News24 spoke with Prof Karim about the initial discovery, and his frustration with the coverage:

Scientists first discovered the 501Y.V2 variant in a patient hospitalised in the Eastern Cape, but that patient is not “patient zero”, said Abdool Karim.

Patient zero is a term which refers to the patient identified as the first carrier in a disease outbreak.

“Because we now know, from testing earlier swabs, that this variant was already being transmitted in October last year in the Eastern Cape. So we don’t know who patient zero is.”

…”So the first reason is that it is stigmatising, the second one is that it is inaccurate, and the third is that it’s inappropriate because it’s no longer a variant restricted to South Africa,” he added.

Lessons have been learnt, and let’s all try and do a little better.

Less ‘SA variant’, more 501Y.V2.

[sources:timeslive&guardian&news24]