WhatsApp does not support Focus mode, it‘s false advertising by them.
What they did add support for is the new communication notifications type, which shows contact photos more prominently.
These notifications require contact details being supplied by the individual app which then allows the OS to break through active Focus modes if the specified contact is whitelisted.
So no, WhatsApp does not support Focus mode other than doing the bare minimum of having upgraded their vanilla notifications to communication ones. They have yet to add support for:
- Time sensitive notifications (could be added to direct mentions by them)
- Focus API (so WhatsApp can detect you having a Focus mode on, whatever they then do with said info is up to them. I could see them adding busy indicators or allowing a way to break through Focus with messages similar to iMessage)
