WHO said it could be more easily transmissible while possibly overriding vaccines, however conceded there is not enough evidence at this stage.
Pablo Tsukayama, a doctor in molecular microbiology at the Cayetano Heredia university in Peru’s capital Lima, spoke to the Financial Times in December and said the variant accounted for one in every 200 samples in the city.
“By March, however, it accounted for about 50 per cent of samples in Lima and now it’s about 80 per cent. That would suggest its rate of transmission is higher than other variants,” he said.