Overnight, the global market collapsed: oil prices fell by more than 7%, Hong Kong stocks fell by 2.67%, Japanese stocks fell by 2.67%, European stocks fell by 4%, US Dow futures fell by more than 2%, and the panic index soared by 15%.

The reason behind it: Botswana, South Africa and many other countries have recently reported a new mutated new coronavirus, named B.1.1.529.

According to Bloomberg news, before the special meeting, a WHO spokesperson said that the mutant strain was first discovered on November 11 and that the mutant virus was discovered very quickly.

Faced with the menacing South African mutated virus, governments around the world responded quickly.

On Thursday, November 25, local time, the United Kingdom has included South Africa in its travel “blacklist.”

Israel, Singapore and other countries have also followed suit.

The strength of the virus has intensified investors' concerns about the future economy, and market risk aversion quickly increased on Friday. Investors began to sell risky assets and rush to safe havens.

Investors are worried that if the new variant of the virus is indeed many times more ferocious than the Delta virus, the main line of global recovery may be interrupted.

WHO chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan said the new variant has "many concerning mutations in the spike protein."

The spike protein is not only the key that viruses use to open doors in our body's cells, it is also the target of most vaccines.

The jury is still out on how the virus originated.

However, considering that South Africa has the largest concentration of AIDS patients in the world, some scientists have given their own speculations.

According to Bloomberg, a scientist at the Institute of Genetics at University College London believes that considering that there are more than 8.2 million AIDS patients in South Africa, the mutant virus may have completed the mutation process in untreated AIDS patients.

This level of mutation most likely came from a single infected person who failed to defeat the virus after infection.

Of course, having many mutations does not necessarily mean it is bad news, and subsequent research on these mutations is very important.

However, the British BBC stated that this new virus variant is very different from the mainstream variants that have been prevalent globally, which may mean that existing vaccines will be ineffective against it.

As of Thursday, nearly 100 cases had been detected in South Africa, with the variant becoming the dominant strain in new infections.

At a media briefing yesterday, Tulio de Oliveira, professor of global health at the University of Washington, said that according to early PCR test results, about 90% of the 1,100 new cases in South Africa on Wednesday may be caused by this variant.

Previously, through genome sequencing and other genetic analyses, Tulio de Oliveira’s team found that all 77 virus samples collected from Gauteng Province between November 12 and 20 were caused by the B.1.1.529 mutation.

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In addition, analysis of hundreds of samples is ongoing.

The spread of the virus cannot be underestimated. On November 25, the virus first appeared in China.

Two cases of the B.1.1.529 coronavirus variant have been recorded in Hong Kong following genome sequencing analysis by the University of Hong Kong.

One of the tourists arrived from South Africa this month and the other from Canada were on the same floor of the same quarantine hotel.

In order to prevent the resurgence of the epidemic from causing a heavy blow to the economy, governments around the world have responded quickly and implemented countermeasures.

On November 26, British Health Secretary Sajid Javid announced that flights from South Africa and its five neighboring countries would be temporarily banned; Singapore announced entry restrictions for people who had been to South Africa and its nearby countries in the past 14 days; Israel also announced this week

Action was taken on the evening of the 4th; Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno said last Friday that the Japanese government was collecting information and "if the situation worsens and the infection expands, the government will respond quickly."

As mentioned earlier, the South African variant strain has 32 mutations on the spike protein, which is far more powerful than the previous most powerful Delta variant strain.

Therefore, scientists have recently become increasingly concerned about its strong anti-vaccination ability and speed of transmission.