Tracking multiple coronavirus variants that have been active over time

Variants of concern have been detected across continents but their designations - as a variant of concern - took varying amounts of time

Multiple coronavirus variants have been detected in the country since the pandemic took hold in March 2020, with Delta being the most devastating.

It accounted for a minority of the variants detected in January before the start of the second wave, shows data from tracker ‘Our World in Data’. But the share of the Delta variant samples began to climb steadily as the year progressed. Scientists analyse samples periodically to understand how the infection is changing and spreading.

It had a less than 10 per cent share in the analysed sequences in March 2021. This rose to over 90 per cent by