WHO report on COVID variant does not mention ‘Indian’: Centre

The Centre on Wednesday said that report of WHO, where it said the B.1.617 COVID variant is a variant of concern, does not mention the term ‘Indian’. The government said that some media reports termed the B.1.617 variant of COVID-19 as the “Indian variant.”

The government said that these media reports are “without any basis, and unfounded.”

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“This is to clarify that WHO has not associated the term “Indian Variant” with the B.1.617 variant of the coronavirus in its 32 page document,” the Press Information Bureau said in a statement. PIB added, “In fact, the word “Indian” has not been used in its report on the matter.”

Earlier on Wednesday, the WHO said that the coronavirus variant, which was first found in India last year in October, is more transmissible and has been found in 44 nations. 

The WHO also clarified that it does not “identify viruses or variants with names of countries they are first reported from.” It added, “We refer to them by their scientific names and request all to do the same for consistency.”

India is currently battling the second wave of COVID-19, as the nation is recording over 300,000 new infections daily. Scientists believe that the exponential rise in cases in India is driven by the new variants, and the B.1.617 variant seems to have contributed most to the rise. 

The B.1.617 COVID variant is also called double mutant because of the presence of two changes in the virus’s genome.