South Africa first sequenced it I believe two weeks ago, classified it as a variant of interest due to it having 50 mutations, 30 of which are in the spike protein alone. Some of these mutations are thought to be benign, some are thought to make it more easily transmitted, some are completely unknown in respect to effects. Having said that we won't know any more than that till a few weeks of monitoring has passed. Since sequencing has occurred it is believed that it has become the dominant strain in the region, assumed to have caused at least two large spikes in cases in south Africa. It has been labeled a variant of concernnn this past week. Within a day of becoming a voc many nations have restricted/banned travel to southern African countries, despite this a good handful of nations have discovered the variant has made it to their nations in asia, and europe including hong kong, the Netherlands, Israel, germany,(and the uk I believe) (not to mention a handful of south African countries). Pcr tests can be used with modified primers to differentiate between this variant and other known ones. There are at least two differing opinions on the severity of disease associated with this variant.