FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS FOR THE B.1.1.529 MUTATED SARS-COV-2 LINEAGE IN SOUTH AFRICA
The Network for Genomics Surveillance in South Africa (NGS-SA, www.ngs-sa.org), which includes the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD), KRISP at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN), University of Cape Town (UCT), Stellenbosch University (SUN), the University of the Free State (UFS), the University of Pretoria, the University of the Witwatersrand (WITS) and the National Health Laboratory Service (NHLS), has been monitoring changes in SARS-CoV-2, the virus which causes COVID-19, since March 2020.
What is the B.1.1.529 lineage?
On 22 November 2021, we detected a group of related SARS-CoV-2 viruses in South Africa named the B.1.1.529 lineage. B.1.1.529 has been detected in Gauteng at relatively high frequency, with >70% of genomes sequenced (n =71) from specimens collected between 14-23 November 2021 belonging to this lineage.
This lineage possesses a high number of mutations previously seen in other SARS-CoV-2 variants of interest (VOI) or variants of concern (VOC) but also other mutations which are novel. One of these changes can be detected through standard diagnostic tests that target the S gene, which allows detection of this lineage in South Africa without sequencing data.