How concerning is the latest COVID-19 Mu variant in B.C.?

VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) — A new strain of the COVID-19 virus is now in the province, and it is leading to questions around potential risk.

The B.1.621 — or Mu — variant was first discovered in Colombia in January and has been found in more than 40 people in B.C. since June. The World Health Organization has now classified the strain as a “Variant of Interest.”

The case numbers are minimal compared to the highly transmissive Delta variant, which has exploded across the country, leading to more COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations.

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In B.C. alone, nearly all the new cases of COVID-19 are linked to the Delta variant.

Still, there was a time when the impact of that strain was not known, prompting many to worry that the new Mu variant could be just as dangerous as Delta.

Sally Otto, a UBC zoology professor and modelling researcher, says right now, that’s not the case and there is no need to panic.

“Mu hasn’t actually been rising in frequency, it’s been kind of hovering under about two per cent frequency, relative to what we saw with Delta, which was once it got established, [there was] really rapid exponential growth,” Otto said.

“That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t pay attention to it, we absolutely should keep an eye on it. But it’s not taking off. Right now, Delta is the main player, the main variant that is the most transmissible and the most worrisome in this country,” Otto said.

Dr. Birinder Narang, co-founder of This is Our Shot campaign, agrees. “It is not showing a significant impact in B.C., we need to watch,” he wrote on social media.

9/ #COVID19BC – Variants of Concern

99.5% of cases have been from Delta Variant (unsurprisingly).

Alpha variant has all but disappeared.

Mu is now a variant of interest and there have been 46 cases since June, but it is not showing a significant impact in BC, need to watch. pic.twitter.com/wkUoIrzJNq

— Dr. Birinder Narang MBBS (Hons), CCFP (@DrBirinderSingh) September 16, 2021

 

The bigger concern than the variant itself, Otto says, is how slow Canada is at sharing data from mapping virus sequences to discover variants of interest present in the population.

A new report found Canada among the worst for sharing data on genome sequencing.

Canada takes three months to present collected data to the global database, compared to the United Kingdom which is able to do it in just two weeks.

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The data is then studied by public health officials, scientists, and other experts around the world to examine what variants are present, and how fast they are spreading.

“There could absolutely be more variants. Now to be honest, Canada doesn’t have as much cases as there are globally so the chances are the variant of concern is going to arise somewhere else. But if a variant of concern arises in Canada, we can’t tell.”

She says the delay in information impacts making real-time decisions on public policy surrounding the virus.

This is the type of analysis, providing early warning signals of more transmissible variants, that would be great to conduct with Canadian #COVID19 data! But with a median lag before uploading sequences of ~3 months, the early warning becomes a long-after-the-fact warning. https://t.co/tiVIayGhpy

— Sarah Otto (@sarperotto) September 14, 2021

“We can’t tell within Canada if there are subtypes of the Delta that are spreading faster than others, and that’s something we need to know,” she said about the mutations and which ones to pay attention to.

Otto says the disconnect of information sharing is even happening in Canada between provinces and territories.

“Here in British Columbia we are sequencing almost every single case of COVID to try and identify what exactly the genetic changes are inside the genome of the virus. But unfortunately that is not then being shared globally, and it’s not even being shared across Canada. And that means that scientists like me who aren’t inside the public health office, we can’t use our skills to look for the changes that are happening in these genomes,” she said, adding the last time B.C. updated their data was two months ago.

Despite fears, the BC Centre of Disease Control says the current vaccines protect against all variants of concern, including Delta, and because variants spread more easily, it is even more important for the majority of the population to be vaccinated.

“This helps protect people who cannot get vaccinated, including children under 12,” the BCCDC explained.

With files from Nikitha Martin