Another strain of the coronavirus has arrived in North Texas and Dallas County officials reported that they have detected multiple cases of the mu variant.
Health experts say it still accounts for less than half of 1% of all cases statewide. Still, they follow him closely.
“It’s a variant of interest designated by the World Health Organization,” said the executive vice president of Baylor School of Medicine and dean of the Department of Clinical Affairs, Dr. James McDeavitt.
That means it’s on the radar. However, it has not reached a variant of concern such as the delta variant, which still accounts for 99.9% of Texas cases.
“It doesn’t seem to surpass the delta variant and it doesn’t seem to be a major concern at the moment,” he said.
But while it’s not necessarily more contagious or deadly, health officials said the presence of the mu variant is evidence that the virus continues to change.
To understand why this matters, Dr. McDeavitt says to think of the virus, or at least the protein it produces, as a blocking and antibody response of the body as a key. As the virus mutates, it changes shape, and the immune response, along with current COVID vaccines and treatments, may be less likely to fit, or in other words, less likely to fight the virus.
McDeavitt said this is what doctors hope to avoid, although some mutation is inevitable as the virus continues to spread around the world.
“We’ve been lucky so far that none of the variants have been these high-consequence variants. But the longer we are, the more likely we are to see one that only talks about the importance of vaccinating everyone as quickly as possible to achieve that this disappears into the background, ”McDeavitt said.
In addition to vaccines, he said current precautions such as masking and social distancing remain the best tools to combat all known variants.