Kappa variant of Covid-19

  • July 10, 2021
  • Posted by: OptimizeIAS Team
  • Category: DPN Topics
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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.
Kappa variant of Covid-19 Science and tech