IHU COVID-19 variant not ‘circulating widely at the moment,’ WHO says

The WHO said the IHU COVID-19 variant emerged in multiple countries in Sept. 2021, and was labelled as a variant worth monitoring in November.

The World Health Organization (WHO) says the “IHU” COVID-19 variant first reported in France is not “circulating widely at the moment” as Omicron continues to spread across the world.

Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, COVID-19 technical lead with the World Health Organization, told reporters at a news conference in Geneva, Switzerland on Thursday that the mutation is considered as a “variant under monitoring.”

The variant, known as B.1.640, was dubbed the “IHU variant” recently by researchers at the Méditerranée Infection University Hospital Institute (IHU) in Marseilles, France, Forbes reports.

The WHO said the variant emerged in multiple countries in Sept. 2021, and was labelled as a variant worth monitoring in November. The other two categories of greater significance the WHO uses to track variants are “variant of concern,” which includes Delta and Omicron, and “variant of interest.”

According to the French researchers, IHU was found in 12 people in the country’s south at roughly the same time that Omicron was discovered in South Africa last year. Omicron has since spread around the world, driving up infections and increasing hospitalizations in countries like Canada.

“Within France, less than one per cent of the samples that were sequenced … are of this particular variant,” Van Kerkhove said.

“It’s important that we track this, particularly because of the number of the mutations it has, but it isn’t circulating widely at the moment.”

Van Kerkhove did not provide exact figures of worldwide IHU cases.