Geneva: The SARS-CoV-2 Variant of Interest (VOI), Kappa (B.1.617.1), which was first reported by India in early October 2020 and has since spread to 57 countries, the World Health Organization (WHO) has stated.
Kappa reached a peak of 1% of all sequences submitted to GISAID in April 2021 but has since shown a steep and continuous decline in the proportion of submitted sequences.
Sequencing data submitted to GISAID and information available to WHO indicate that the prevalence of Kappa at a global and country levels has remained very low since July 2021.
“This decline to very low to no circulation was also observed in regions of India that had previously experienced high transmission of this variant, such as Maharashtra,” WHO stated.
Kappa was designated as a VOI on 4 April 2021. Like the Delta variant, this variant has the spike mutation P681R, which is thought to increase the transmissibility of the variant. This variant shares a common parent lineage with Delta, but Delta has additional notable amino acid changes in the spike protein. Also similar to Delta, Kappa shows a limited reduction in the neutralizing activity of convalescent sera and sera of vaccinated individuals.
Meanwhile, the latest weekly epidemiological report (September 21, 2021) released by WHO shows the numbers of weekly COVID-19 cases and deaths globally continued to decline this week, with over 3.6 million cases and just under 60 000 deaths reported between September 13-19, 2021.
This brings the cumulative number of confirmed cases reported globally to just under 228 million.
In terms of COVID-19 mortality, nearly 60 000 deaths were reported globally in the past week, a 7% decrease as compared to the previous week. This brings the cumulative number of deaths to over 4.6 million.
The highest numbers of new cases were reported from the United States of America (1 017 644 new cases; similar to last week), India (211 242 new cases; 15% decrease), the United Kingdom (203 077 new cases; 21% decrease), Turkey (183 962 new cases; 16% increase), and the Philippines (141 522 new cases; similar to last week); while the highest number of new deaths were reported from the United States of America (12 896 new deaths; 2% increase), the Russian Federation (5469 new deaths; similar to last week), Brazil (3 727 new deaths; 17% increase), Mexico (3 689 new deaths; 20% decrease), and the Islamic Republic of Iran (2 967 new deaths; 21% decrease).
Globally, cases of the Alpha variant have been reported in 193 countries, while 142 countries (one new country since last week) have reported cases of the Beta variant; and 96 countries (four new countries since last week) have reported cases of the Gamma variant. The Delta variant has been reported in 185 countries (five new countries since last week) across all six WHO regions as of September 21, 2021.
– global bihari bureau
