COVID variant first detected in India found in 44 countries: WHO

B.1.617 variant of virus found in samples uploaded to open-access database ‘from 44 countries in all six WHO regions’.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has said that a variant of COVID-19 behind the acceleration of India’s explosive outbreak has been found in dozens of countries all over the world. The UN health agency on Wednesday said the B.1.617 variant of the coronavirus, first found in India in October, had been detected in more than 4,500 samples uploaded to an open-access database “from 44 countries in all six WHO regions”. “And WHO has received reports of detections from five additional countries,” it said in its weekly epidemiological update on the pandemic.