Here’s why we need to keep an eye on the South African variant: https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/covid-19-variants-south-african-strain-is-causing-the-most-concern-for-uk-scientists-965679

As a post-script: I’ve had some people asking me to stop using “the South African variant”. There are reasons why we do refer to it as this: 1. There is no internationally agreed system for naming variants. When fast communication in a pandemic is essential, that’s a pity;

2. The U.K. government refers to “the South African variant”, “the Nigerian variant”, “the Indian variant” and “the Kent variant” as well as their lineage labels B1351, B1525, B1617 and B117; 3. World governments refer to “the Kent variant” or “U.K. variant” - it’s not only one

place or country that is being associated with variants; 3. If we were to only refer to numbers in news stories it would be confusing and less clear. There is an argument for referring to “the variant first discovered in Kent” but again that makes the report less clear.

This is not a perfect naming system and it is important not to stigmatise countries but there are so many variants emerging across the world it is not like only one country is being saddled with a label. It is crucial that reporting of the pandemic is clear and easy for people

to understand so people can respond to public health information such as surge testing and so on. End of thread, I think