Coronavirus | Indian COVID-19 variant found in at least 17 countries, says WHO

The WHO recently listed B.1.617 — which counts several sub-lineages with slightly different mutations and characteristics — as a "variant of interest".

The World Health Organization said Tuesday that a variant of COVID-19 feared to be contributing to a surge in coronavirus cases in India has been found in over a dozen countries. The U.N. health agency said the B.1.617 variant of COVID-19 first found in India had as of Tuesday been detected in over 1,200 sequences uploaded to the GISAID open-access database "from at least 17 countries". "Most sequences were uploaded from India, the United Kingdom, USA and Singapore," the WHO said in its weekly epidemiological update on the pandemic.