The new variant of the coronavirus, dubbed "
Mu
" and first identified in Colombia in January, is now predominant in the country and the source of the deadliest wave of the pandemic last spring, said Thursday. September 2 the health authorities.
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"
Indeed, Mu is the predominant variant in Colombia and it is she who is responsible for the third wave
" of contaminations from April to June 2021, declared on a local radio an official of the National Institute of Health, Marcela Mercado. .
"
(...) More or less 60% of the deaths that we have sequenced are from this lineage
", explained Marcela Mercado.
Contaminations and deaths reached a record high between April and June 2021, with up to 700 deaths per day, and a hospital system on the verge of collapse.
"
Immune escape
"
The B.1.621 variant, according to scientific nomenclature, was classified at the end of August as "
variant to follow
" by the World Health Organization (WHO). It first appeared on the Atlantic coast of Colombia (north) in January. According to the WHO, this variant has mutations that could indicate a risk of "
immune escape
" (resistance to vaccines), and more studies are needed to better understand its characteristics. "
It has already been identified in more than 43 countries and has shown a strong contagiousness
", recalled Marcela Mercado.
Colombia has now passed the most critical phase of the pandemic, but still has just under a hundred deaths and 2,000 infections per day. This improvement is due to the current vaccination campaign, according to the head of the National Institute of Health, while 29% of the 50 million Colombians are now vaccinated. “
We could have a peak in October,
” she warned, “
because there are still people
” likely to be infected and “
feed the epidemic
”. Delta, alpha and gamma variants are also circulating in the country. Since March 2020, nearly 125,000 deaths due to Covid have been recorded in Colombia, for 4.9 million infected.
