Health
With regard to reports of four prevalent COVID-19 variants in the province:
(a) What is the prevalence of these variants in the province, (b) which districts are affected by each variant and (c) what is the breakdown of the number of people infected by each of the four variants in the province?
(a) Genomic surveillance of public and private sector specimens is ongoing. Sequencing is both time and resource intensive and so only a relatively small proportion of all specimens are sequenced to represent which variants are predominating. From this analysis, four variants have been detected in the Western Cape. The predominant variant until late May/early June has been Beta, but the Delta variant was first identified in routine surveillance in the Western Cape on 24 May 2021 and has rapidly started to dominate, accounting for more than half of specimens sequenced in June. Very few cases of the Alpha and Eta variants have also been detected.
(b) The Beta variant has previously been found across the province, but Delta has been detected in the Metro, Garden Route and Overberg. Sequencing data for other districts is in progress.
(c) Proportion of different SARS-CoV-2 variants over time in Western Cape and 7 day moving average of new cases (black line). Source: Network for Genomic-Surveillance in South Africa
Provisional sequencing results May 2021 – both TBH and GSH NHLS
Variant | Number of cases | % |
Beta | 135 | 80.36 |
Alpha | 8 | 4.76 |
Delta | 14 | 8.33 |
Eta | 7 | 4.17 |
20B | 4 | 2.38 |
| 168 | 100.00 |
