Tony's Diary Package — page 934

and The Rt Hon Sajid Javid MP 1.g0V> (Ov> @nih.gov Iley@fnih.org>; Holland, Steven (NIH/NIAID) [E] Deputy Health Minister in UK gave statement to Parliament about why they are prohibiting travel fro RSA and other African countries: Oral Statement on B.1.1.529 variant The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care has given a statement to Parliament on a new variant under investigation and action government is taking. From: Department of Health and Social Care and The Rt Hon Sajid Javid MP Published 26 November 2021 Delivered on: 26 November 2021 Email from Elodie Ghedin on her briefing by the South Africans: Ghedin, Elodie (NIH/NIAID) [E] <elodie.ghedin@nih.gov> Sent: Friday, November 26, 2021 8:57 AM To: Collins, Francis (NIH/OD) [E] <collinsf@od.nih.gov> Cc: Tabak, Lawrence (NIH/OD) [E] <lawrence.tabak@nih.gov>; Menetski, Joseph (FNIH) [T] <jmenetski@fnih.org>; Wholley, David (FNIH) [T] <dwholley@fnih.org>; Holland, Steven (NIH/NIAID) [E] <sholland@niaid.nih.gov> Subject: Re: New variant Good morningWe had an ad hoc/emergency meeting of the WHO Technical Advisory Group on Variant Emergence (TAG-VE) this morning with a presentation from South African scientists. We were asked to not report our discussion until the WHO puts out a statement later today so the report below is confidential. Here is the low-down: • S.A. had gotten to a stage of very low infection rate so that they noticed this new variant-- B.1.1.529--because of its very rapid increase in cases; the rate of infection is higher than expected. (as background, seroprevalence in S.A. was at 80-85% so that the low infection rate they were seeing with Delta was likely due to the fact the virus ran out of susceptibles; vaccination rate is at 30%). • The first evidence was an increase in positive cases associated with S gene target failure (drop out) in the qPCR assay; Sequencing of those early samples in Gauteng showed new mutation