Health officials not saying if new COVID variant “Mu” found in Mississauga or Brampton
Published September 10, 2021 at 4:56 pm
Reports of the latest COVID-19 variant show the Mu strain is present in Canada, but Region of Peel officials aren’t saying yet if it’s appeared in Mississauga or Brampton.
So far during the pandemic, Peel has been among the first and hardest hit communities when a new variant arises.
Dr. Lawrence Loh, Peel’s Medical Officer of Health, confirmed at a news conference earlier this week that the Delta variant remains the predominant strain. He said between 75 to 90 per cent of all new cases are Delta.
The Mu variant was first documented in Colombia in January, 2021. It has since been confirmed in dozens of countries, including Canada where 170 cases are known to exist in the GTA.
Globally, the Mu variant is accounting for fewer than one in a thousand cases, so officials are monitoring it, but it accounts for a large percentage of the cases in Colombia and Ecuador.
There are reports that Mu might be resistant to vaccines, however, the same fears were around when Delta emerged and they proved unfounded.
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“The Mu variant has a constellation of mutations that indicate potential properties of immune escape,” reads the latest weekly epidemiological update from the World Health Organization (WHO).
That means those with some level of immunity to earlier strains, either by previous infection or vaccination, might be susceptible to infection from mu, but that’s only according to preliminary data and “needs to be confirmed by further studies,” the update continued.
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