What does IHU, the new variant of Covid-19 detected in France, mean for Mumbai and India? Health experts raise concern amid the city and country witnessing the beginning of the third wave with Delta and Omicron variants. Dr Wiqar Shaikh, professor of Medicine, Grant Medical College and Sir J J Group of Hospitals, said he is alarmed by the reported new variant of SARS-CoV-2 which has emerged in Southern France. Dubbed the IHU variant as it was researched and detected at the IHU Méditerranée Infection Institute in Marseille, France, the variant has now been labelled as the B.1.640.2.

Dr Shaikh said that the study on the IHU variant was published in the journal medRxiv on December 29, 2021. The study reported the first case of IHU in a French national who visited Cameroon, a country in Africa, for three days. On his return, he tested positive for Covid-19 but his genome sequencing revealed what is now known as the IHU variant. Interestingly enough, he said that the visitor to Cameroon was fully vaccinated. The study also reports 12 more cases of the IHU variant till the time of publication.