By Christine Fabro
A new naming system using the Greek alphabet for COVID-19 variants of concern was the World Health Organization’s (WHO) solution to avoid stigmatizing the countries where they were first detected.
The four variants of concern worldwide take on the following names: Alpha (α–B.1.1.7), Beta (β–B.1.351), Gamma (Γ–P.1), and Delta (δ–B.1.617.2), which were first detected in United Kingdom, South Africa, Brazil, and India, respectively.
In the Philippines, a new variant was documented in January 2021 and was named as Theta (P.3) variant. As of June 17, this variant has been detected from 163 COVID-19 patients here.
With the emergence of these variants of concern, the Delta variant remains the most dominant variant among 80 countries around the world, according to WHO.
As of June 18, 17 Delta variant cases have been detected in the genomic sequencing in the Philippines.
Read more: DOH, UP-PGC, UP-NIH detect more COVID-19 variants
According to the latest biosurveillance report from the Philippine Genome Center on June 17, there were a total of 1,267 Beta variant, 1,085 Alpha variant, 163 Theta variant, 17 Delta variant, and 2 Gamma variant cases detected in the Philippines.
As of June 21, the Department of Health (DOH) posted a total of 55,847 active COVID-19 cases after recording a 5,429 new COVID-19 cases today. – rir
