A COVID-19 variant spreading in India is more transmissible and is feared to be escaping some vaccine protections, stated the WHO’s chief scientist in an interview on Saturday. 

In the interview with AFP, Soumya Swaminathan cautioned that the epidemiological features observed in India at present suggest that it is a highly rapidly spreading variant. She added that the B.1.617 variant of coronavirus was contributing to the catastrophic COVID-19 outbreak in India. “There have been many accelerators that are fed into this,” she said, emphasizing that “a more rapidly spreading virus is one of them”.

The WHO has also recently categorized B.1.617 as a variant of interest… (ET Healthworld – AFP, May 10, 2021)