Director of the KwaZulu-Natal Research and Innovation Sequencing Platform Tulio De Oliveira says if COVID-19 transmissions remain at high levels, others variants may emerge. Several cases of the COVID-19 variant dominant in India have reached our shores. De Oliveira says at this point it's unlikely that the B.1.617.2 variant would combine with the 501yv2 variant and become more transmissible.