The World Health Organisation (WHO) has named the four most concerning variants take on the first four letters of the Greek alphabet:
- Alpha: a variant originally detected in the UK
- Beta: a variant originally detected in South Africa
- Gamma: variant originally detected in travellers from Brazil
- Delta: variant originally detected in India
The Delta variant is the most recently designated variant of concern, as classified by the WHO. It was first detected in India in October last year, and is considered highly contagious. UK authorities have estimated it is 40 percent more transmissible than the Alpha variant. It has also been found in some of the cases in Victoria, Australia.
