South African President Cyril Ramaphosa is due to convene a meeting of the National Council for the Control of the Coronavirus on Tuesday to discuss a new variant identified in the country this week.
A new subvariant of Covid, known as XBB.1.5, has also been reported in the US and UK.
It is an offshoot of the globally dominant Omicron Covid variant and is highly transmissible.
President Ramaphosa confirmed the meeting to local reporters on Tuesday and urged South Africans not to panic.
“We are smart enough to want to hold this meeting tomorrow and then there will be information to share with the rest of the country,” he said. Eyewitness News.on Monday.
“Some people were saying, ‘are we going to have restrictions and lockdowns and all that?’ – far from it. We just need to be informed about what is happening with this option,” he added, according to reports Business Day.news site.
South Africa recorded more than three million Covid-19 infections at the peak of the pandemic – the highest number of confirmed cases of any African country.
