WHO narrows in on Delta Covid variant

Pedestrians walk past a sign warning members of the public about the spread of Coronavirus, as they walk along the street in Hounslow, west London

The WHO said Tuesday that one strain of a Covid-19 variant first detected in India was now considered ‘of concern’ and had been dubbed ‘Delta’, 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 called 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 Tuesday, 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.