What is the most aggressive variant of COVID-19 and what does the WHO say about all strains?

More than two years have passed since the SARS-CoV-2 came into the life of humans. Like all viruses, this one began to mutate and the changes were alerting the World Health Organization (WHO).

Most of these changes have little or no effect on the properties of the virus. However, some mutations can cause problems in the efficacy of vaccines, the ease of spread or the severity of the disease itself. COVID-19.

Thus, since January 2020, the WHO decided to classify the variants of the COVID-19 in “Variants of interest (VOI)”, “Variant of concern (VOC)”, “Variants under surveillance” (VUM).

Variants of concern (VOC)

It is a variant of COVID-19 that presents criteria such as increased transmissibility, increased virulence, decreased efficacy of vaccines, or changes in available treatments. They would be the most worrying mutations of the coronavirus.

Variants of interest (VOI)

These strains present changes in the genome that affect characteristics of the virus such as its transmissibility and are capable of causing a growth in numbers of cases in the countries.

Variants under surveillance (VUM)

They are the ones that still do not have clear evidence of changes that it can cause in the characteristics of the virus. These should be studied until more information is obtained.

The WHO states that a variant can be reclassified if it is shown that “It no longer poses significant added risks to global public health compared to other variants of the virus”.