Scientists in SA have challenged the UK’s representatives in the country for using inaccurate claims about the prevalence in the country of a Covid-19 variant that can “circumvent” vaccines as justification for keeping SA on its red list.
The UK drew criticism from the government and tourism bodies after its decision on Friday to keep SA on the list, dealing another blow to a sector that was one of the country’s success stories before the outbreak of the pandemic. The UK’s stance runs counter to much of the rest of the world, with countries including the US, Germany and Mauritius opening or planning to open their borders to vaccinated travellers from SA.
SA’s red list status means that travellers returning to the UK from SA must spend 10 days in quarantine at a cost of more than £2,000 (R40,500).
The UK was SA’s largest tourist market before the pandemic, with more than 400,000 Britons visiting in 2019.
The UK high commission on Monday said via Twitter that it remained “concerned about the continued presence of Beta given its potential ability to circumvent vaccines”.
Beta is a variant of the coronavirus first identified in SA.
Prof Tulio de Oliveira, the director of the KwaZulu-Natal Research and Innovation Sequencing Platform at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, said this was not true and challenged the commission to provide publicly available genomic data that shows the Beta variant is present in SA.
Labelled the “SA variant” when detected here in late 2020 — there is no proof the strain originated in SA — the discovery of the Beta variant saw SA banned as a travel destination by much of the world. Beta has since been surpassed by Delta, first discovered in India, which is also dominant in the UK.
We recognise positive developments in SA - cases going down, data on variants of concern improving and vaccinations rising. While a small number of cases, we remain concerned about the continued presence of Beta given its potential ability to circumvent vaccines.
— UK in South Africa🇬🇧🇿🇦 (@ukinsouthafrica) September 20, 2021
“We are finishing and releasing a paper showing that Delta completely replaced Beta in SA and potentially in all of Africa,” De Oliveira said. “We look forward to engaging the UK scientists and for constructive discussion with the UK as we both fight the pandemic.”
Prof Marc Mendelson, head of infectious diseases and HIV medicine at the University of Cape Town, who is a British citizen, said on Twitter he was “utterly embarrassed by my own government and their representatives in SA”, adding that “hopefully, this wrong can be righted through hard data and diplomatic pressure”.
Previously, only SATSA, a travel body representing 1,350 inbound travel operators, was lobbying for the SA travel industry and has been working in the UK since May, hiring lobbyists and working behind the scenes with scientists. SATSA consultant Gillian Saunders said there had been a growing awareness of the impact of the scientific statements about variants in SA.
Prof Shabir Madhi of Wits University told Business Day that other countries facing lower travel restrictions than SA to the UK — such as Kenya, Egypt, Pakistan and Bangladesh — had minimal genomic surveillance, resulting in the UK government being even less aware of what variants dominate there.
Madhi, whose initial research showed the AstraZeneca vaccine was less effective against mild illness caused by the Beta variant, said the UK high commission’s tweet that Beta did not respond to vaccines is untrue.
“Vaccines differ in the extent to which they protect against mild-moderate Covid due to the Beta variant. However, they converge in having high levels of protection against severe Covid due to the Beta variant.”
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