Not necessarily. The variant is not determined for all positive cases, that actually happens rather rarely. I was not able to find numbers for SA, but in Washington State in the US, only in 8.4% of all cases the variant was determined. If out of those 2800 infections, this only happened for 170 cases and out of those 170, 100 are the new one variant, everything fits. Rereading your post I just saw that the 100 cases were globally. I couldn't find a source for the number, but as far as I know there are only very few cases (single digits) found outside of SA.mr.WHO wrote: ↑Sat, 27. Nov 21, 12:09However I somehow find contradicting information:
- there were multiple articles that say the overall global count of infections of that new variant is rather low (like around 100 confirmed cases)
- on the other hand there is a chart that the new variant is now 60% of new infections in SA
Given that yesterday count of new infections in SA was around 2'800, one of this is either false or mistake.
or maybe new variant somehow require new/different test?
Overall, yesterday was flash panic in media worldwide.
And while panic is never the right mode, deep concern and preventive steps would be a smart idea (saying this while sitting in Germany, where at the moment pretty much everyone just looks on and lets things happen instead of actually doing anything).
Also, the problem with not panicking and instead waiting for a full analyis is that if that analysis turns out the virus is more contagious and more deadly, the wait could mean millions of deaths and even more mutations.