The World Health Organization has finally labeled the B.1.617 COVID-19 variant first discovered in India last year as a ‘variant of concern‘.
It is widely known that the coronavirus has brought India’s healthcare system to its knees with a record 400,000 or more infections per day and as many as 3700 daily record deaths. India despite being the world’s pharmaceutical powerhouse has only been able to vaccinate one-fifth of its 1.4 billion population
The WHO has now ascertained that this strain transmits more easily than the original version and may show some resistance to vaccine protections. The variant will now join the strains in Britain, Brazil and South Africa as strains of concern.
Although the WHO maintain that the available vaccines are known to help curtail the original strain, there are no evidences that it is effective against the new strains of the coronavirus.
