Amid growing cases of corona infection in India, the World Health Organization reported on Wednesday that there is a variant of Covid-19 behind India’s corona explosion. This variant has reached not only in India, but in dozens of countries around the world. The United Nations Health Agency said that the B.1.617 variant of Covid-19 was first found in India in October. Sequences uploaded to the GISAID open-access database reveal that this variant has been found from 44 countries in all six WHO regions. This variant has also appeared in the report of five countries.
The WHO reported on Wednesday that the B.1.617 variant is transmitted more easily and faster than the original virus and that is why the number of corona infection cases and deaths in India is increasing rapidly. However the WHO also emphasized that the effect of this variant can be reduced by vaccination.
India, the country of 1.3 billion people, is the second most infected country in the world after the United States of America (23 million). Apart from B.1.1.7 variants, many variants of Corona are spreading across the country. The World Health Organization has placed Indian variants of Kovid (B.1.617) in the category of worrisome variants globally.
Corona’s Indian variant ‘worrying’
Dr. Maria van Kerkhov, who is associated with the Kovid-19 technical team at WHO, said that the first variant B.1.617 of the virus which was introduced in India was first classified as a surveillance format by WHO. He said that discussions are going on between various parties of WHO regarding this variant of the virus.
Apart from this, Kerkhov said, he is also keeping an eye on what information we have about this infection and what studies are being done about the spread of this virus in India and other countries. Kerkhov said, ‘After discussing the available information about the Indian variants of the Kovid-19 and its proliferation capacity, we have placed it in the category of worrisome variants globally’.
