How Indian Covid-19 variant spread to dozens of countries? | Namaste Bharat (May 12, 2021)

The B1617 variant, first identified in India in October, has been detected in over 4500 sequences uploaded to the GISAID open-access database, till May 11, "from 44 countries in all six WHO regions," the global health agency said in its weekly epidemiological update on the pandemic on Tuesday.

The WHO has also "received reports of detections from five additional countries", the update said.

The Global Initiative on Sharing Avian Influenza Data (GISAID) is a German non-profit organisation, launched in 2016 as a database for sharing flu genomes.