AS Zimbabwe and the rest of the globe are still reeling under the stress and strain of the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic that first emerged late in November 2019, in Wuhan, China, there are strong rumours circulating of a new variant and that Zimbabwe will be no exception.

Coronavirus genetic material has undergone numerous mutations, from alpha to omicron, some of which have altered how easily it is transmitted and the severity of disease it causes. These changes, or mutations, occur when a virus replicates itself or makes copies.  

A virus that has mutated in this way is referred to as a ‘variant’. Variants of COVID-19 (Sars-COV-2) include alpha, beta, gamma and delta.  

In May 2021, WHO began assigning letters of the Greek alphabet to variants of interest and variants of concern. 

This was both to make them easier to remember, and to remove the stigma associated with referring to them by the country where they were first detected, which is not necessarily reflective of where they first emerged and may disincentive countries from reporting their existence.

Some of these variants of interest, such as eta, iota and kappa, have since been taken off WHO’s watch list because they are no longer considered a threat. 

Other letters of the Greek alphabet, such as ‘nu’ and ‘xi’, have not been assigned to a variant because ‘nu’ is too easily confused with ‘new’, and ‘xi’ is a common last name.

It was not clear whether omicron spread more easily from person to person compared to other variants, or whether infection with it causes more severe disease. 

At its peak, omicron had more than a million infected people per day.

At the end of 2022, the New Year holiday came with more travel and crowded festivities, off-shoots of omicron continued circulating, killing over 250 000 people in the US alone. 

Amid the ongoing toll, many had decided the pandemic was over, as vaccine and treatment availability took some of the anxiety out of the coronavirus threat. 

Masks were no longer required, social distancing measures were abandoned while many centres for disease control and prevention relaxed their guidance.  

However, WHO advised that although cases of COVID-19 had eased globally, it urged people to remain cautious nonetheless. 

COVID-19 is still with us.

Since the outbreak of the pandemic, Zimbabwe has suffered four waves of COVID-19; the severest was recorded during the festive period between November 2020 and February 2021. 

Following the first case of COVID-19 reported in March 2020, by October 2020, more than 8 000 cases and 243 deaths were recorded in Zimbabwe.  

In July 2021, the Third Wave of the pandemic hit Southern Africa with the fourth coming in December 2021.

By early December 2022, Zimbabwe recorded 52 new cases, 259 438 cumulative cases, 450 active cases and one death, bringing the total number of deaths to 5 623. Twenty nine new recoveries were recorded, bringing the total number of recoveries to 253 364.  

The COVID-19 recovery rate in Zimbabwe stood at 98 percent. Zimbabwe remains on high alert for COVID-19 following the confirmation of a new variant in neighbouring South Africa, which health authorities say spreads very fast. 

In 2023, COVID-19 continued to be recorded in Zimbabwe, with 29 cases by January 8, but not of the new variant and no deaths.

Hunting for variants requires a concerted effort. 

South Africa and the UK were the first countries to implement nationwide genomics surveillance for SARS-CoV-2 as early as April 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Network for Genomics Surveillance in South Africa has been monitoring changes in SARS-CoV-2.  

This was a valuable tool to understand better how the virus spread. 

In late 2020, the Network detected a new virus lineage, 501Y.V2, which later became known as the ‘beta’ variant.  

Now, a new SARS-CoV-2 variant has been identified – B.1.1.529. 

WHO has declared it a variant of concern, and assigned it the name omicron.

China is currently battling the new COVID-omicron XBB variant with WHO concerned about how quickly the XBB.1.5 sub-variant spreads, noting that it is the most transmissible sub-variant ever detected.

Though WHO has no data on the seriousness of XBB.1.5, there is no indication that it makes people sicker than previous sub-variants.

The coronavirus has so far defied prediction and experts differ in their outlook on the possible distant or imminent surge of the virus, and what might lie ahead in this fourth year of the pandemic. 

Dr Tony Monda concurred with virologists and public health experts when asked about what COVID-19 might bring for Zimbabwe in 2023, and said: “Now we’re at a different stage with the virus, because we have a lot more tools that we didn’t have, or had in limited capacity to deal with it; but we still have many questions. It’s possible that a game-changing variant could emerge, but it is very difficult to foresee where or when. There’s no established epidemiological pattern yet that would allow us to predict better. There is also ongoing evolution in many different animal species, and new emerging zoonotic diseases which could be transmissible to humans. Additionally, there are long-lived infections in immuno-compromised people where much evolution and mutation can occur. Consequently it’s difficult to predict.”

While there has not been another major variant emerging since omicron burst onto the scene last year, there is concern that a wave of infections will provide new opportunities for the virus to evolve. 

Each new infection provides the virus more chances to generate new combinations of mutations. 

The continuing circulation of SARS-CoV-2, therefore, means that we should expect the virus to continue to evolve. In the US, as in most other countries, the vast majority of people have some immunity to SARS-CoV-2 through infection, vaccination, or both.  

For many or most of these people, immunity would likely ‘cross-react’, at least a little, with new SARS-CoV-2 variants. Thus, the population-level pre-existing immunity could mitigate the impact of new variants. 

Although some of the variants of concern that have been identified so far appear able to partially evade the immunity generated by vaccination, current evidence confirms vaccines still help to reduce the spread of COVID-19 and are highly effective at reducing hospitalisation and deaths associated with the disease.

 Dr Michelina Andreucci is a Zimbabwean-Italian researcher, industrial design consultant and a published author in her field.  For comments 

e-mail:  :linamanucci@gmail.com