A rollercoaster year of varying variants
Mbongeni Mguni | Monday December 27, 2021 06:00
The World Health Organisation (WHO) decided last year that to limit discrimination against countries that discover variants, new strains would be given names from the Greek alphabet as opposed to being called ‘the Botswana variant’, for example. Only strains that are classified as ‘variants of concern’ are assigned the Greek names.
Scientists say viruses mutate to survive. As they replicate themselves in their hosts, the copies of themselves they make often have ‘mistakes’ or mutations. If a mutation provides to be a survival advantage, then that mutated version becomes the dominant strain within a population. Some of these mutations make the virus more transmissible and deadly, others weaken it.
On January 26, 2021, the Botswana Institute for Technology, Research and Innovation (BITRI) announced the presence of a COVID-19 variant that would later be named ‘Beta’ by WHO.
Riding on the co-mingling of people over the festive season, the Beta variant drove cases up to 9,175 in January 2021 from 3,897 in December 2020 and deaths from 21 to 121 over the same period.
Data from the Presidential COVID-19 Task Force indicates that cases during the Beta wave would eventually peak at 243 for March 2021. Between April and May, the country enjoyed a lull of sorts in the pandemic, when compared to the height of the Beta wave.
Then the Delta variant came along. First detected in the country in April, the variant only became the dominant strain in June, pushing the worst period Batswana have experienced thus far since COVID-19 broke out in the country last year.
Cases in June and July peaked at a collective 69,711. July was the worst month in terms of COVID-19 mortalities, with deaths rising to 573, from 219 in June and from an average of 184 in the five months before that.
During that period, funeral notices became a daily occurrence for many, as both public and private hospitals overflowed and the limited health human resources were stretched to breaking point.
Reports emerged of stricken patients waiting for hours in the parking lots of health facilities, while the major hospitals issued notices essentially asking patients to stay away as they were filled up.
Cases and deaths began to ease off from mid-August and many would have been forgiven for believing that the worst was behind.
Then on November 24, the Task Force announced that a new variant, far more mutated than Delta had been discovered in four foreign arrivals on a diplomatic mission to the country. South Africa also announced that it had detected the same strain in more people. The WHO called an emergency meeting, classified the variant as one of concern and named it Omicron.
While scientists continue to study the new variant and its behaviour, it is already known that Omicron is far more transmissible than any other strain, moving with lightning speed between people.
The day after the variant was announced in Botswana, active COVID-19 cases were pegged at 532, one of the lowest in a difficult year. Despite the global panic around the new variant, cases remained generally low in the days towards the end of November, with just 27 detected countrywide between November 27 and 29.
Then, as with all the previous variants, Omicron tightened its grip and from December 6, active cases went from 1,710 to 10,745 as at the last update on Monday.
However, unlike Beta and Delta, Omicron has not yet caused an uptick in deaths. Since December 6, the total number of mortalities from COVID-19 have only risen by four and authorities are yet to say if any of these were linked to the new variant or its older strains.
Hospitalisations have also remained stable despite Omicron and most healthcare facilities having adequate capacity, for now, Task Force scientific advisor, Mogomotsi Matshaba said recently.
“We are hopeful that Omicron will be better than the other variants but we cannot say for sure, looking at the numbers now,” he said in a bi-weekly televised update. “We learn from each wave and with the first one, we were in a lockdown and didn’t see many numbers. “The third was the worst.”
According to Matshaba, the country’s main COVID-19 treatment centre, Sir Ketumile Masire Teaching Hospital, currently has 20 patients with most not requiring oxygen support. Only one is in the intensive care unit. By comparison, during the third wave driven by the Delta variant, Sir Ketumile Masire Teaching Hospital was overflowing with patients.
“That does not mean things will stay that way. “We are watching, especially the situation in South Africa who are ahead of us, where it went very high quickly,” Matshaba said.
On Tuesday, South Africa’s National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) announced that preliminary research had shown that Omicron patients in that country had an 80% lower risk of hospitalisation, compared to other variants.
Part of the reasons, scientists believe, could be differences in deadliness, higher population immunity due to vaccination and possibly more people having already contracted COVID-19 and thus enjoying greater antibody protection.
However, the NICD’s research also shows that once admitted, the risk of severe disease was the same as the previous variants.
For Batswana, the new year brings uncertainties as to which direction Omicron will take. There is hope however as South Africa’s Gauteng province, which was the epicentre of the Omicron outbreak, has officially come off its peak in cases and is now seeing a decline.
Whether another variant lies beyond Omicron is anyone’s guess.