B.1.640: 5 Canadian cases of little-known coronavirus variant
CTV
The B.1.640, or 'IHU' coronavirus variant that made headlines recently has been a 'variant under monitoring' since November 2021, according to the World Health Organization, but is currently not circulating widely. Five cases from Canada have been reported on GISAID.
The B.1.640 variant was first detected in a number of countries in September 2021, according to the WHO, and has two sub-lineages, B.1.640.1 and B.1.640.2. B.1.640.2, dubbed the “IHU” following a study published at the end of December on the preprint server medRxiv.org by IHU Méditerranée Infection in Marseille, France, attracted attention due to the large number of mutations detected. Preprints are studies that have yet to be peer-reviewed and evaluated.
Five cases of the variant have been sequenced in Canada and shared on GISAID – four in Ontario and one in Quebec. GISAID allows scientists from around the world to quickly share COVID-19 data, including genetic sequencing. The Quebec sequence was collected on Oct. 2, 2021 in a 34-year-old individual. One Ontario sample was collected in a male on Dec. 10, 2021 and another on Jan. 4, according to GISAID data.
Variants under monitoring are those with genetic changes that are "suspected to affect virus characteristics with some indication that it may pose a future risk" but the evidence of its impact is currently unclear, according to the WHO. These variants fall below the "variants of concern" identified by the health agency, such as Omicron and Delta, and also below "variants of interest" which have genetic changes predicted or known to affect characteristics like transmissibility and disease severity, and has caused notable transmission or clusters in multiple countries or other epidemiological impacts that could pose a risk.
"Less than one per cent of the samples that were sequenced in France are of this particular variant," Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, the COVID-19 technical lead with the World Health Emergencies Programme said during a WHO press conference.
