June 4: The Ministry of Health and Population has clarified that there isn’t any new variant of COVID-19 in Nepal as reported in the international media.    
Issuing a press statement on Thursday, the ministry’s spokesperson Dr Krishna Prasad Poudel said that the ministry’s attention had been drawn towards the misleading news regarding the detection of new variant and refuted those claims.    
According to the state-owned national news  agency RSS, Dr Poudel clarified that only the Alfa, Kappa and Delta variants are active in Nepal.    
The statement has urged media houses and outlets not to publish any misleading and false news until obtaining authentic information from the ministry. The Ministry had also appealed to the media and media persons to be responsible towards disseminating factual news.    
Furthermore, the Ministry had appealed to one and all for complete compliance of the health safety protocols to contain the pandemic.    
The World Health Organization has also clarified that it was not aware of any new variant detected in Nepal, RSS further reported.

Among the existing variants, Delta is the most active one and highly contagious, the WHO said.      

Nepalese embassy refutes baseless news on origin of mutant strain of coronavirus
The Embassy of Nepal in London said that its serious attention has been drawn towards a news report carried out by the UK-based Daily Mail newspaper on June 3 regarding a baseless claim about the origin of a mutant strain of SARS-Cov-2 in Nepal.    
Issuing a press statement, the Embassy of Nepal in London said that the variants identified in Nepal so far are Alpha and Delta, both of which did not originate in Nepal.

“The World Health Organization has rebutted the origin of a new variant in Nepal stating that the prevalent variant currently in circulation in Nepal is Delta (B.1.617.2),” RSS reported citing the Embassy.    
Likewise, the Embassy stated that it has sent a letter of Daily Mail refuting the baseless news and requesting to correct it.