A new corona variant is quickly spreading around the world. The variant, provisionally named C.1.2, was first spotted in South Africa in May, but has since appeared in Congo, Mauritius, England, Portugal, Switzerland and New Zealand. And those are just the countries where C1.2 is certain to exist.
The variant is more contagious than other variants of the coronavirus and knows how to circumvent antibodies, and therefore vaccines. This may mean that people who have had covid or have been vaccinated against this variant are less well protected. Scientists are also concerned about the speed with which the variant mutates, Bloomberg writes. At a rate of about 42 mutations per year, it does so almost twice as fast as the hitherto known variants of the coronavirus.
