COVID variant Kappa kills its first victim in UP

Kappa Variant , a new variant of Coronavirus seems to be making its impact slowly in Uttar Pradesh. The state has reported two cases of the Kappa variant of Covid-19, which has been confirmed by the King Geroge’s Medical College where the genome sequencing of 109 samples took place.

Out of these 109 samples, 107 Delta Plus variant cases have been found. Some reports claimed that there have been three cases of Kappa variant in Uttar Pradesh and the first patient, a 66-year-old resident of Sant Kabir Nagar, has succumbed to the disease.

According to the Union health ministry’s June data, there were 3,969 Alpha, 149 Beta, 1 Gamma, and 16,238 Delta and Kappa variant cases in India. the B.1.617 lineage was first observed in Maharashtra and was “associated with an unusual rise in several districts of the state”, the ministry had said about the lineage, not specifying Delta or Kappa. On Friday, Niti Aayog member (health) VK Paul said the Kappa variant in India got overshadowed by Delta.

This is not a new variant. According to the World Health Organizations’s site on tracking SARS-Cov-2, the Kappa variant was first detected in India in October 2020. The variant is identified as B.1.617.1, while Delta is represented as B.1.617.2.

WHO at present has not classified this variant as a variant of concern. Like Lambda, which has already spread in 30 countries across the world, Kappa is a variant of interest.