geneva the world health organization said wednesday that a variant of covid19 behind the acceleration of indias explosive outbreak has been found in dozens of countries all over the worldthe un health agency said the b1617 variant of covid19 first found in india in october had been detected in more than 4500 samples uploaded to an openaccess database from 44 countries in all six who regionsand who has received reports of detections from five additional countries it said in its weekly epidemiological update on the pandemicoutside of india it said that britain had reported the largest number of covid cases caused by the variantearlier this week the who declared b1617 which counts three socalled sublineages with slightly different mutations and characteristics as a variant of concernit was therefore added to the list containing three other variants of covid19 those first detected in britain brazil and south africathe variants are seen as more dangerous than the original version of the virus because they are either being more transmissible deadly or able to get past some vaccine protectionsthe who explained wednesday that b1617 was added to the list because it appears to be transmitting more easily than the original virus pointing to the rapid increases in prevalence in multiple countrieswho also pointed to preliminary evidence that the variant was more resistant to treatment with the monoclonal antibody bamlanivimab and also highlighted early lab studies indicating limited reduction in neutralisation by antibodiesit stressed though that realworld impacts on the effectiveness of vaccines against the variant for instance may be limitedwho said the spread of b1617 alongside other more transmittable variants appeared to be one of several factors fuelling indias dramatic surge in new cases and deathsindia a country of 13 billion people is the worlds secondmost infected after the united states with nearly 23 million covid19 cases and is currently recording more than 300000 new cases and close to 4000 deaths each daythe new surge in cases has ravaged major cities including the capital new delhi and financial hub mumbai pushing hospitals to breaking point and leading to severe shortages in oxygen and bedswho found that resurgence and acceleration of covid19 transmission in india had several potential contributing factors including increase in the proportion of cases of sarscov2 variants with potentially increased transmissibility it saidit also pointed to several religious and political mass gathering events which increased social mixing and underuse of and reduced adherence to public health and social measuresthe exact contributions of each of these factors on increased transmission in india are not well understoodwho stressed that so far only 01 percent of positive covid tests in india had been genetically sequenced and uploaded to the gisaid database to identify the variant in questionby the end of april b16171 and b16172 accounted for 21 and seven percent respectively of all sequenced samples from india it saidin addition other more contagious variants are also spreading in the country including b117 which was first detected in britain