IHU variant

The world is constantly on the watch for new variants of COVID-19.  This one was identified late last year by researchers at the IHU Mediterranee Infection Institute in Marseilles.  By January this year the WHO had decided that it was neither a variant of interest nor a variant of concern, which I suppose is why it has this unofficial name.  It has not been detected anywhere outside the southern Alps region of France.

 The other variant which sparked off some interest was identified in Cyprus and  called Deltacron since it was thought to be a blend of Delta and Omicron, showing some features of each.  However, the WHO has decided that this one doesn’t really exist but is a product of contamination in a lab.  Apparently the best-run lab in the world can produce such contamination from time to time.

 So far so good.  We just have Omicron to deal with.