The Ministry of Health and Wellness in St Vincent and the Grenadines has confirmed the presence of the Mu COVID-19 variant.
In a media release issued shortly before 9 pm, the ministry said on review of sequencing results for samples sent from St Vincent and the Grenadines to the COVID-19 IMPACT Project Lab through the Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA), five cases of the Mu variant were detected between July 19 and August 9, 2021.
All cases were detected within the community as contacts of other positive cases and from persons seeking healthcare.
Meanwhile, four new COVID-19 cases were reported from 36 samples processed on Monday September, 6 resulting in a positivity rate of 11.1 per cent.
Five new recoveries were noted over the reporting period. Sixty-five cases are currently active and 12 persons with COVID-19 have died to date.
Since March last year, 2,389 cases of COVID-19 and 2,312 recoveries have been recorded in St Vincent and the Grenadines.
The Ministry of Health says in view of the confirmed presence of the Mu variant of interest in the community and the increased risk of infection and subsequent transmission of COVID-19 posed by the growing incidence of variants of concern in persons entering St Vincent and the Grenadines, strict compliance with all protocols and recommendations is strongly recommended.
These include the effective use of masks, physical distancing, hand sanitising and immunisation with available vaccines.
The World Health Organization (WHO) on August 30, 2021, named the variant B.1.621 – Mu, a variant of interest.
A variant of interest (VOI) is one that has genetic differences to the other known variants and is causing infections in multiple countries, and therefore might present a particular threat to public health.
A VOI is not a variant of concern (VOC), which is a variant that has been proven to be either more transmissible, cause severe disease or is able to escape the immune response making it more dangerous and so more consequential.
Mu is the fifth “variant of interest” to be monitored by WHO since March 2020. The WHO weekly COVID-19 bulletin states that this variant of interest “has a constellation of mutations” that may make it less susceptible to vaccines and immunity from natural infections.