Kappa variant of Covid-19

Kappa variant of Covid-19

Subject: Science & tech

Context: Recently, two cases of Kappa variant of Covid-19 have been recorded in Uttar Pradesh.

Concept:

Kappa variant of Covid-19

• According to World Health Organization (WHO), Kappa is one of the two Covid-19 variants (the other being Delta) first identified in India.
• The Delta and Kappa variants are siblings i.e. the direct descendants of a variant that earlier used to be referred to as the double mutant, or B.1.617.
• The WHO had named this variant ‘Kappa’ and B.1.617.2 ‘Delta’ just as it named various variants of the coronavirus using Greek alphabets.
• According to the WHO, this variant was first identified in India in October 2020.

Degree of severity of Kappa variant of Covid-19

• Kappa variant is still listed among ‘variants of interest’ and not ‘variants of concern’ by the WHO.
• The variants of interests are “a SARS-CoV-2 variant with genetic changes that are predicted or known to affect virus characteristics such as transmissibility, disease severity, immune escape, diagnostic or therapeutic escape.