Some Virology Facts:

1- All viruses mutate which is nothing new. Say person A is COVID positive and infects Person B. Now if a genome sequencing is done then viral genetic make-up found in person A and B will be different.

2 - In South Africa this variant is just found in 10 people. Now media got something hot to talk about for few weeks..

3 - You can't exactly measure how contagious a variant is in labs. Most of the study is done on animal models. So far there isn't even a proper study or peer reviewed paper that can claim even Delta is more contagious than beta or alpha.

4 - Variant and strains:

A variant is a virus sequence that is different from the reference virus (in this case the original 2019 Wuhan isolate). Here there is no proof that this causes physical changes to virus (Phenotype).

A Strain is a variant that possesses unique and stable phenotypic characteristics.

Have a look at www.nextstrian.org to see the sheer number of variants present in every country