Coronavirus
WHO: New Delta Mutant in view
Social distancing sign in London. Experts had recently reported that the mutant was still spreading in Great Britain, which is still small. Photo: Alberto Pezzali / AP / dpa
© dpa-infocom GmbH
There are several variants of the coronavirus. Not all of them are considered worrying. The World Health Organization now wants to keep a closer eye on a new sub-variant of Delta.
According to its own statement, the World Health Organization (WHO) has a new mutant of the Corona variant Delta in view, which has already been found in Germany.
The virus called AY.4.2 has two additional mutations, the WHO announced at the request of the German Press Agency.
The Robert Koch Institute (RKI) reported on request that the sub-variant of Delta had been detected around 280 times in Germany since the week of July 5th to 11th. However, only a small part of the corona samples are checked for virus variants. The share of AY.4.2 in all total genome sequences has been between 0 and 0.5 percent in the RKI sample since that week. The spread is still very low.
AY.4.2 has not yet been discussed in RKI publications on variants. This would only be the case if the WHO classified the mutant as of interest or as worrying, it said.
Experts had recently reported that the mutant was still spreading in the UK, which is still small. Russia also recorded the first cases, as a representative of the consumer protection agency Rospotrebnadzor said, according to the Interfax agency.
There was also evidence of AY.4.2 in the USA and Denmark. However, researchers have not yet assumed that the mutant could be significantly more contagious than the previous Delta variant.