Only one strain of COVID-19 Delta variant detected in India is now of concern: WHO

The WHO said Tuesday that only one strain of the Covid-19 Delta variant first detected in India was now considered “of concern”, while two other strains had been downgraded.

The B.1.617 variant of the virus, which has in part been blamed for India’s explosive outbreak, has been dubbed a triple mutant variant since it is split into three lineages.

The UN health agency last month declared the entire strain a “variant of concern”, or VOC, but on June 1, it said only one of the sub-lineages deserved that label.

“It has become evident that greater public health risks are currently associated with B.1.617.2, while lower rates of transmission of other lineages have been observed,” the World Health Organization said in its weekly epidemiological update on the pandemic.

The UN health agency said that in order to reflect this updated information, B.1.617 has been “delineated”.

“B.1.617.2 remains a VOC and labelled variant Delta – we continue to observe significantly increased transmissibility and a growing number of countries reporting outbreaks associated with this variant. Further studies into the impact of this variant remain a high priority for WHO.” The Delta variant has now been reported in 62 countries around the world as of June 1, the update said.

The WHO’s move came nearly three weeks after India objected to the B.1.617 mutant of the novel coronavirus being termed an ‘Indian Variant’ in media reports with the Union Health Ministry pointing out that the UN’s top health organ has not used the word ‘Indian’ for this strain in its document.

On May 12, the ministry dismissed as ‘without any basis and unfounded’ media reports that have used the term ‘Indian variant’ for the B.1.617 mutant strain, which the WHO recently said was a ‘variant of global concern’.

On May 29, Vietnam Health Minister Nguyen Thanh Long announced that authorities in the Southeast Asian country have detected a new coronavirus variant that is a combination of the strains first identified in India and the UK.

WHO Health Emergencies Programme Technical Lead Maria Van Kerkhove told reporters that this was the B.1.617.2 variant with one additional deletion in the location of the spike protein.