Covaxin, developed by Hyderabad-based Bharat Biotech, Indian Council of Medical Research and National Institue of Virology, Pune has been found to protect against the B.1.617 variant or the Indian double mutant strain, White House Chief Medical Adviser Anthony Fauci said on Tuesday.

"This is something we are still gaining data on, but most recent data looking at convalescent sera of Covid-19 cases in people who received Covaxin...it was found to neutralize the 617 variant," Dr Fauci said at a White House briefing.

Dr Fauci stressed that "vaccination could be a very, very important antidote against this" despite the massive rate of inspection in India.

"So I'll stop there with the final statement. The one thing you can gather from everything I've said: that it's very important to get vaccinated," he was quoted as saying in the media.

Covaxin had received approval on January 3 for emergency use despite being in the trial phase.

ICMR, which is one of the developers of the vaccine, later said that the trials showed the vaccine to be 78 per cent effective.

The B.1.617 variant which has been found in the infected people in Delhi and Maharashtra has three new spike protein mutations and is behind the deadly surge in the Covid cases across the country.

Meanwhile, the WHO said that the B.1.617 strain has been found in over a dozen countries.

The UN health body said the strain first found in India "has been detected in over 1,200 sequences uploaded to the GISAID open-access database from at least 17 countries.'"

"Most sequences were uploaded from India, the United Kingdom, USA and Singapore," the WHO said in its weekly update.