What’s known about ‘IHU’, new Covid-19 variant discovered in France
- Variant was first detected in France and showed up in a traveller who recently arrived from Cameroon
- WHO says variant ‘has been on our radar’, but it’s not considered a variant of interest or concern
As the highly transmissible Omicron variant replaces Delta as the dominant strain of the coronavirus, another new variant has sparked some interest but current data indicates it’s not a cause for concern.
The variant, called B.1.640.2, was dubbed the “IHU variant” by researchers at the IHU Mediterranee Infection Institute in Marseilles, who first identified the variant in France in November, according to Forbes.
According to a December study that is not yet peer-reviewed, the researchers confirmed 12 patients tested positive for the variant, which contained mutations that also appeared in other fast-spreading variants.
While the new variant was discovered about the same time as Omicron, the B.1.640.2 variant hasn’t been detected anywhere outside the southern Alps region of France, Time magazine reported.
The first patient identified with the variant was vaccinated and had just returned from Cameroon, IHU researchers said.
The World Health Organization says the B.1.640.2 variant “has been on our radar”, but it’s not considered a variant of interest or concern.
“That virus had a lot of chances to pick up,” said Abdi Mahamud, incident manager for the WHO’s Covid-19 Incident Management Support Team, at a news briefing in Geneva on Tuesday.