COVID-19: Mu variant confirmed in BC — this is what you need to know

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Dozens of cases of the Mu COVID-19 variant (recently declared as the variant of interest) have been identified in British Columbia.

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According to BC Center for Disease Control’s Latest weekly updates For the mutant strains of concern and the mutant strains of interest, 46 Mu cases have been detected since June, including the two most recent weeks.

Even before the World Health Organization declared the B.1.621 mutant to be of interest and named it Mu on August 30, the BC Center was monitoring it through a whole genome sequencing system. BC will further analyze all positive COVID-19 test results to see if they are a variant of concern, a variant of interest, or a new variant.

Today, the highly contagious Delta concern that is sweeping the world accounts for nearly 100% of all British Columbia cases. Other substances of concern (gamma, beta, alpha, etc.) are currently rarely present in the state.

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Mu variants are relatively few in British Columbia, but worth paying attention to. There are some things you need to know.

Where did it come from?

Mu was identified in Colombia on January 11, 2021 and is currently found in 31 countries.

This is a recently recognized and interesting mutant that has joined Eta (B.1.525), Iota (B.1.526), ​​Kappa (B.1.617.1) and Lambda (C.37).

In Colombia, a large surge of COVID-19 occurred from March to August 2021 and peaked on June 26, 2021 with 33,594 cases per day.

In the early stages, gamma VOCs prevailed in Colombia, but Mu VOI outperformed all other variants, including gamma VOCs in May 2021, and has since caused an epidemic in Colombia.

How dangerous is it?

According to WHO’s COVID-19 Bulletin, published last week, Mu has caused some larger outbreaks in South America and Europe. Although the number of gene sequences identified as Mu is less than 0.1% worldwide, it represents 39% of mutants sequenced in Colombia and 13% in Ecuador, with a “consistent prevalence”. “Increasing”, WHO reported.

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The global health agency said it continues to monitor Mu for changes in South America, especially in areas that co-circulate with delta variants.

Mariavan Kerkhove, head of the WHO Emerging Infectious Diseases Unit, said Mu circulation is declining globally but needs to be carefully monitored. At a press conference last week, White House Chief of Staff Dr. Anthony Fauci said US officials were monitoring it, but so far Mu has not been seen as an imminent threat.

This is according to the latest research

Researchers at Japanese universities last Tuesday Present researchAlthough not peer-reviewed, it indicates that the Mu mutant had the ability to evade antibodies and vaccines. The study found that Mu was “extremely resistant” to antibodies in blood samples of COVID-19 survivors and people vaccinated with the Pfizer or Moderna mRNA vaccine.

According to the research team, the spikes used by the new mutants to invade cells were more resistant to neutralization than all other recognized and concerned mutants and mutants of concern.

However, Dr. Eric Topol of the Scripps Clinic in California, who was not involved in the study, said the next day that Delta’s high infectivity outweighed Mu’s ability to evade antibodies.

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What’s next?

It is important to increase the number of people vaccinated with COVID-19, as a large group of unvaccinated people will have the opportunity to spread and mutate the virus, Reuters reports.

Experts say that efforts need to be stepped up to prevent uncontrolled emergence of variants among people in poor countries with few vaccinated people.

British Columbia is by far the best internationally, with 78% of residents over the age of 12 already fully vaccinated.

During the week of September 2-8, unvaccinated people accounted for almost 82 percent of all hospitalizations with COVID-19 BC.

This shows that current vaccines prevent serious illness and death, but not infection. The virus can replicate in the nose, even among vaccinated people. And they can infect the disease through small, aerosolized droplets.

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Dr. Gregory Poland, a vaccine developer at the Mayo Clinic in the United States, said defeating COVID-19 is likely to require a new generation of vaccines to stop the transmission of new variants. The rise of new coronavirus mutants.

Not only that

The original COVID-19 virus, which prevailed in Wuhan, China in late 2019, is now an incredibly important footprint in the virus sand. It is now just a “wild” COVID-19 virus, with many mutations and mutations surpassing it and not found in BC.

As of September 2021, WHO has defined four variants of concern, in addition to which BCCDC has Epsilon (identified in California), Zeta (identified in Brazil), Theta (identified in the Philippines), And various other variants are also monitored. Variants of concern and interest.

— Use files from Reuters

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