Abdi Mahamud, a WHO incident manager on COVID-19, has said that the IHU (B.1.640.2) variant of COVID-19, that has infected 12 people in France, "has been on our radar". WHO's COVID-19 Technical Lead, Maria Van Kerkhove, while responding to a virologist's tweet on the IHU variant, said, "B.1.640 was classified as a Variant Under Monitoring by WHO in November."