WHO monitoring ‘mu’ variant in Colombia and Ecuador

‘mu’ variant

Mu variant identified in Colombia may be more resistant to vaccines

A new coronavirus variant, named mu, has been designated a variant of interest by the World Health Organisation (WHO). Mu, or B.1.621, was first identified in Colombia and cases have been recorded in South America and Europe. The WHO’s weekly bulletin on the pandemic said the variant has mutations indicating “potential properties of immune escape”, meaning current vaccines would be less effective against it, but that more studies would be needed to examine this further.

“Since its first identification in Colombia in January 2021, there have been a few sporadic reports of cases of the mu variant and some larger outbreaks have been reported from other countries in South America and in Europe,” the bulletin said. “Although the global prevalence of the mu variant among sequenced cases has declined and is currently below 0.1%, the prevalence in Colombia (39%) and Ecuador (13%) has consistently increased.”

There are currently four coronavirus variants of concern, as deemed by the WHO, with the alpha variant seen in 193 countries, beta in 141, gamma in 91 and delta in 170 countries, while mu is the fifth variant of interest.

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