Beta has followed Alpha and they joined Gamma and Delta as well, as pointing to a Varian of concern (VOC) from the Coronavirus novel. While the world carefully traces the spread of the Delta variant, or B.6.617.2, which was first identified in India in October last year, India itself was worried about Delta-Plus. But the variant parade seems to continue and experts in the past few days say the eyes must be stored on the Kappa and Lambda variants too, both of which have been labeled as an interesting variant (VOI) by WHO.
WHAT IS KAPPA?
This is a variant that is linked to the genealogy of the mutation B.1.617 which also raises the Delta variant. B.1.617 has been found to carry more than a dozen prominent two mutations: E484Q and L452R, which is why this variant is also called “double mutant”.
But because it evolved, B.1.617 branched into a new lineage. One of them, B.1.617.2 is called Delta and is the most common variant at this time in India. Another genealogy, B.1.617.1, is called Kappa and is designated as a VOI by the World Health Organization (WHO) in April this year. But the Kappa itself also contains sub-lineages, B.1.617.3 which, although not set separately, is being tracked too.
According to WHO, A VOI is “has been identified to cause community transmission / several cases / Covid-19 clusters, or have been detected in various countries”.
Kappa was first detected in India and more than 3,500 of nearly 30,000 cumulative samples submitted by the state to the GISID initiative, which maintained the global database of this novel Coronavirus genome. In the last 60 days, the Kappa variant has made 3 percent of all samples submitted by India. India, in fact, lead GISAID tables for submission of Kappa and followed by Britain, US, Canada, etc.
What is lambda?
Variant C.37, better known as lambda, its name in accordance with the WHO design based on Greek alphabet letters, is the latest VOI identified by the UN Health Office. It was first identified in Peru in December last year and has so far been detected in samples from around 26 countries shared with GISID. The highest number of samples proposed are from Chile followed by the US. Peru is third in the list.
However, there are no samples far from India that have a lambda variant.
The Lambda variant is included in the lineage B.1.1.1, which has been identified in 29 countries, including in North America and South, Europe and Oceania. Who said that this variant has many mutations in a surge protein, which can have implications for how easy the virus spreads among people.
Health officials in the UK say that lambda is related to the common symptoms with most other variants of the Coronavirus novel and there is currently no evidence that it causes disease more severe or makes vaccines less effective.
