BOGOTA – The last thing the world needs is another variety of COVID-19 to worry about, but the reality is that it is here and has already spread to 43 countries. This time, it comes from Colombia and is known as B1621 or the Mu variant, and is more resistant to vaccines and more contagious than other variants, which is a real concern in a country where just over 29 percent of the population has been fully vaccinated.
However, opinions on whether Mu will become the next strain to attack the region and then spiral uncontrollably around the world, are divided.
On Monday, the World Health Organization (WHO) identified Mu as a variant of interest (VOI), joining people like Eta, Iota, Kappa and Lambda. But while recent headlines call terror in most international media, this variant is in sharp decline in Colombia, having been discovered here eight months ago, in January 2021. For this reason, doctors and epidemiologists in this South American nation have continued to focus on other rampant variants, although Mu accounts for 39% of cases in Colombia and 13% in neighboring Ecuador.
Speaking through private communication with The Daily Beast – who was not given permission to speak to a journalist – ICU doctors in several Colombian cities expressed surprise at the recent dramatic drop in COVID cases. 19 in the country. On August 16 they began to shrink below 100 days, and hospital units and buildings once ceded to treat virus cases have been returned to their previous uses.
However, Mu will not be forgotten any time soon and remains firmly in the collective memory of Colombians, having been the main cause of the third wave of the virus in June this year. At the peak of June 21, Mu accounted for 60 percent of all infections and fatalities in the country, causing a total of 125,000 new cases and 655 deaths that day alone.
“For now, we cross the eye of the tornado.”
– Dr. Jaime Ordonez Molina, senior researcher at True Consulting.
Now, citizens seem to enjoy a period of relative calm. Having endured one of the longest closures in the world, employment at UCI in Colombia currently averages only 60%, and bars and clubs across the country have been reopened.
But is Colombia really out of the woods?
“Right now, we’re crossing the eye of the tornado,” Dr. Jaime Ordonez Molina, a senior researcher at True Consulting, told Daily Beast. “We have passed the Mu half of the tornado and now we face the other half which is Delta. The Delta variant will force us to re-evaluate the whole situation, just like what is happening in the United States and in large parts of Europe, Asia and Oceania at the moment. “
It seems that all eyes are now on the Delta variant.
“The good news is that we have already passed Mu, mathematically speaking, Colombia has experienced a decrease for two months and this decrease can really be observed for about 12 days,” Ordóñez Molina said. “This confirms two things: the first is that Colombia has overtaken Mu and the second is that vaccines are working against this strain.”
The data speak for themselves and the graphs show a significant decrease in infections in the same way that the Colombian government praises its successes with vaccinations and economic recovery.
But even so, it is not a time for complacency.
“If there is an earthquake in the United States, up there,” said Carolina Villada, a spokeswoman for Colombia’s National Institutes of Health (INS), a vital epidemiological resource for monitoring COVID-19 in the country, referring to the recent explosion of the Delta in the US “Here in Colombia, we receive the aftershocks in two or three months.”
If this schedule is correct, it means that the potential for an increase in infections and fatalities could occur in September and early October, representing a fourth peak in Colombia. And this could be made even worse if the Mu variant is in co-circulation with the Delta variant.
“There are very difficult days ahead.”
“Some external observers have said that Mu does not appear to have the ability to compete with Delta and that, in fact, analyzing the data published by Colombia in Gisaid, Mu decreases by 11 percent day by day in relation to Delta,” Martha Ospina, director of the INS, told The Daily Beast.
While predictions cannot be made with absolute certainty, given the adaptability and mutations that have already been experienced with COVID-19, the INS and others like Ordonez Molina are urging people not to lower their guard.
“There are very difficult days ahead,” said Ordóñez Molina, “with a strain that demonstrates this capacity for transmission and infection and in a country with so few people completely vaccinated.”
It seems that Delta, not Mu, is still the tension to watch out for in South America.