Mu Variant Could Be More Resistant to Vaccines, WHO Warns

The World Health Organization (WHO) has identified a new variant of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus and classified it as "Variant of Interest" (VOI).

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Mu strain or B.1.621 was first identified in Colombia in January 2021 and cases have already been detected in other Latin American countries and in Europe. At this time, the new variant does not appear to be able to displace the Delta strain as the dominant variant on a global scale. However, the Mu variant has reached a high prevalence in Colombia, where it is present in 4 out of 10 infections.

Although no firm conclusions can yet be drawn, the WHO assures that the new variant has mutations that could give it a greater ability to escape the effect of vaccines.

In order to monitor its evolution, the WHO classified Mu strain as a "variant of interest", a category which includes those variants having genetic changes that could affect virus characteristics such as transmissibility, disease severity, immune escape, diagnostic or therapeutic escape.

Una VOI causes "significant community transmission or multiple COVID-19 clusters, in multiple countries with increasing relative prevalence alongside increasing number of cases over time, or other apparent epidemiological impacts to suggest an emerging risk to global public health," the WHO explained.

Mu variant is not classified as a "variant of concern", which is a category in which variants that pose some type of proven additional risk are included.

Currently, scientists conceive four strains as worrisome variants: alpha (U.K.), beta (South Africa), gamma (Brazil) and delta (India).