44 nations hit by India virus variant: WHO
Covid deaths surge to more than 3.31 million, according to Johns Hopkins University
Geneva THE Indian coronavirus variant (B1617), which has now been declared a "variant of global concern" has spread to 44 countries, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has said.
The B1617 variant, first identified in India in October, has been detected in over 4,500 sequences uploaded to the GISAID open-access database, till May 11, "from 44 countries in all six WHO regions," the global health agency said in its weekly epidemiological update on the pandemic on Tuesday.
The WHO has also "received reports of detections from five additional countries", the update said. The Global Initiative on Sharing Avian Influenza Data (GISAID) is a German non-profit organisation, launched in 2016 as a database for sharing flu genomes. The WHO's SARS-CoV-2 Virus Evolution Working Group on Tuesday determined that viruses within the lineage B1617 are a variant of concern.
It now has been added to the list of other Covid-19 "variants of concern" -- UK (B117), South African (B1351) and Brazilian (P1) variants. The B1617 variant was declared as a variant of concern based on early evidence of higher rates of transmission, including its observed rapid increases in prevalence in multiple countries.
