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The delta variant is predominant around the world, the WHO technical officer for Covid said. To file
Geneva:
Delta has all but eliminated the other three variants of Covid-19 of concern, which now represent a tiny fraction of the samples being sequenced, the WHO said on Tuesday.
“Less than one percent each of Alpha, Beta and Gamma are currently circulating. It really is mainly Delta in the world,” said Maria Van Kerkhove, World Health Organization technical officer on Covid-19.
Delta “has become fitter, it is more transmissible and it competes, it is replacing other viruses that are circulating,” she said during a live interaction on WHO social media, adding that Delta had been detected in more than 185 countries for Date.
All viruses mutate over time, including SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19 disease.
In late 2020, the emergence of variants with increased risk to global public health prompted the WHO to begin characterizing them as variants of interest, and variants of greatest concern, to inform the response to the pandemic.
The United Nations health agency decided to name the variants after the letters of the Greek alphabet, to prevent countries that detected them first from being stigmatized.
Along with the four worrying variants, there are also five interesting variants, but Van Kerkhove said three of them – Eta, Iota and Kappa – are now downgraded to Watch variants.
“This is really due to the changes in circulation and the fact that the variants of interest are just being overtaken by the worrisome variants. They just don’t settle,” she said.
(This story was not edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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