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President Cyril Ramaphosa has outlined the ANC’s plan for the South African economy during his closing remarks at the ANC's first-ever virtual lekgotla.

Local experts in South Africa say there is no cause for panic over the new COVID-19 variants.

This comes after British scientists are fearful that the South African variant of the coronavirus may cause the greatest risk.

Riante Naidoo filed this report.

Another COVID-19 variant has experts on high alert.
The Lambda strain which was first detected in Peru last December
has spread to more than 30 countries. It shares a mutation with the Delta variant
which can make it more transmissible but Peruvian researchers say there’s no evidence
that it’s the key cause of the country’s high death rate.
Rianté Padayachee found out more about this variant and filed this report.

In some parts of the world, life is slowly reverting to normal. But experts say returning to pre-COVID conditions in South Africa will take much longer. That’s due to our slow vaccination uptake, which has exposed vaccine hesitancy as a serious problem. Communication and health experts are weighing in on this, and one thing remains clear, we need to rapidly boost our collective immunity. Rianté Padayachee reports.

Efforts to reach more people suffering from HIV and substance abuse, came under the spotlight on Wednesday, when the relevant role players came together to discuss the way forward.

To unpack this, we spoke to David Bayever, chairperson of the Central Drug Authority.

This has truly been an annus horribilis for matrics.
Education expert and Professor of Education at Stellenbosch University, Professor Jonathan Jansen, believes that Sadtu has zero chance of reversing, the Basic Education Department’s decision for a rewrite. Professor Jansen joined us via Skype.

There is hope for the future,
according to economist and policy analyst, Mandisa Xuba.
She reacted to the news that the long-awaited,
free-trade policy agreement for Africa will finally be implemented.
The African Continental Free Trade Area agreement,
will see 31 of the 54 countries on the continent,
freely import and export goods and services, amongst each other.

Pfizer-BioNTech’s coronavirus jab just became the third vaccine to receive emergency approval in South Africa.

But, there are concerns about how effective it will be against the dominant COVID-19 strain,
that was discovered in South Africa last year.

Riante Naidoo has this story.