The Philippines must improve its vaccination efforts to protect more Filipinos from the B.1617 variant or the "double mutant" first traced to India, an infectious disease expert said Wednesday, May 12.

At least two cases of India's coronavirus disease (COVID-19) variant have been detected in the country, the Department of Health (DOH) reported Tuesday, May 11.

In an interview with CNN Philippines, Dr. Rontgene Solante, Chief of the Adult Infectious Diseases and Tropical unit at the San Lazaro Hospital said the variant, which has been identified as "variant of concern" by the World Health Organization, is more transmissible.

Solante added that there are few data that the B.1617 variant can affect the efficacy of a vaccine or a treatment. However, he noted that there's no evidence yet if the variant is "deadlier."

"The concern about this variant now is if this continues to circulate and our vaccination will not be ramped up or be delayed, there's a possibility that eventually our vaccine will not really be effective against this variant," Solante said

He added that some countries like the United States are already looking at giving vaccine booster shots that target the variant.

"As of now, the ability of this variant is not significant enough to affect the efficacy of our current available vaccine," the infectious disease expert said.

Solante also highlighted the importance of conducting early genomic surveillance among those who tested positive for the virus.

"Continue doing the surveillance of genomic sequencing of all positive because we don't know yet if there are already Indian variants prior to this arrival of these two individuals."