The World Health Organization (WHO) on Monday announced news labels, using Greek alphabets, for various variants of the SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19), and named the variant first found in India as ‘Delta’ while the earlier found variant in the country will be known as ‘Kappa’.
Labelled using Greek alphabets, World Health Organisation (#WHO) announces new labels for Covid variants of concern (VOC) & interest (VOC). #Covid variant first found in India will be referred to as ‘Delta’ while earlier found variant in the country will be known as ‘Kappa’ pic.twitter.com/oc7noATtsR
— NewsMobile (@NewsMobileIndia) May 31, 2021
Both the B.1.617.2 strain or Delta and B.1.617.1 strain or Kappa were first detected in India in October 2020, WHO said.
Earlier this month, the Government of India issued an advisory to social media platforms asking them to remove all content referring to the B.1.617.2 strain as the ‘Indian variant’.
Besides, the strain discovered in the UK in September 2020 has been labelled ‘Alpha’ and the one found in South Africa in May of last year ‘Beta’. The WHO has labelled the strain found in Brazil in November 2020 as ‘Gamma’, and the one discovered in the US in March of last year as ‘Epsilon’.