Business Insider reports that a new variant of COVID-19, which the World Health Organization (WHO) says could have the ability to evade the immunity people get from vaccines and previous infections, has been detected in almost every US state, according to data from epidemiology and genomic database Outbreak.info. Insider’s Cheryl Teh reported the WHO noted in its weekly bulletin that further studies would need to be done on the mutated variant to see if it can evade immune defenses to COVID-19,
Called Mu, the B.1.621 variant was first detected in Colombia in January this year. Newsweek was the first to break the news that as of September 4, cases of the strain have been reported in 47 US states and the District of Columbia. The only states without reported cases are Nebraska, Vermont, and South Dakota, according to Outbreak.info’s data. The strain is currently most prevalent in Alaska, where data suggests that 139 reported cases account for 4 percent of the total 3,837 sequenced samples. California has the highest number in terms of raw numbers, the data show, with 232 reported cases of the B.1.621 variant out of 139,930 sequenced, but due to that state’s large population, it accounts for less than one percent of those sampled.
Earlier this week, Mu was added to the WHO’s “of interest” list of variants, but it’s important to note that currently, the Mu variant accounts for fewer than one percent of total COVID-19 cases. The Delta variant is the dominant strain in America. And Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Joe Biden’s chief medical officer, said last week that the Mu variant did not represent an “immediate threat” to the U.S. at this time. “This variant has a constellation of mutations that suggests that it would evade certain antibodies, not only monoclonal antibodies but vaccine- and convalescent serum-induced antibodies,” Fauci said during a COVID-19 press briefing on September 2. “But there isn’t a lot of clinical data to suggest that. It is mostly laboratory in-vitro data,” he added.
Fauci said that health officials are “keeping a very close eye” on the situation.
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