Jubilee Post News & Views
Jubilee News Desk
‘Kappa’, another variant of the covid-19 has been reported in Uttar Pradesh. This after delta, and delta plus.
According to the health department delta variant was responsible for about 70% cases during the second wave and its now the delta plus, two cases of which were reported from Gorakhpur region. Another one case of Kappa variant of covid-19 was also reported from Gorakhpur.
The B.1.617.1 variant has been designated by who as ‘Kappa’ while the B1.617.2 variant has been dubbed ‘Delta.’
Kappa variant is linked to the B.1.617 lineage of mutations that has also given rise to the Delta variant. B.1.617 has been found to carry more than a dozen mutations of which two stand out E484Q and L452R, which is why this variant has also been called the “double mutant”.
But as it evolved, the B.1.617 branched out into new lineages. One of those, B.1.617.2 is called Delta and is the most prevalent variant at present in India. The other lineage, B.1.617.1, is called Kappa and it was designated as a VoI by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in April this year.
According to WHO, a VoI is one that has been identified to cause community transmission/multiple Covid-19 cases/clusters, or has been detected in multiple countries.
Kappa was first detected in India and more than 3,500 of the close to 30,000 cumulative samples submitted by the country to the GISAID initiative, which maintains a global database of novel coronavirus genomes, are of this variant. In the last 60 days, the Kappa variant has made up 3% of all samples submitted by India. India leads the GISAID table for Kappa and is followed by the UK, US, Canada.
