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The Ministry of Health and Wellness in St Vincent and the Grenadines has confirmed the presence of the Mu COVID-19 variant in that country.<\/p>\n
The ministry said in a media release issued last night that 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.<\/p>\n
All cases were detected within the community as contacts of other positive cases and from persons seeking healthcare.<\/p>\n
The Ministry of Health is strongly urging strict compliance with all protocols and recommendations in view of the confirmed presence of the Mu variant of interest in the community.<\/p>\n
The ministry is also concerned\u00a0 about the increased risk of infection and subsequent transmission of COVID-19 because of the growing frequency of variants of concern in persons entering St Vincent and the Grenadines,<\/p>\n
The recommended safety measures include the effective use of masks, physical distancing, hand sanitising and immunisation with available vaccines.<\/p>\n
The World Health Organization (WHO) on August 30, 2021, named the variant B.1.621 – Mu, a variant of interest.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
A variant of concern (VOC), 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. A VOI is not a variant of concern.<\/p>\n
Mu is the fifth variant of interest to be monitored by WHO since March 2020. The others are the Alpha Variant (formerly called the UK Variant and officially referred to as B.1.1.7), first found in London and Kent, the Beta Variant (formerly called the South Africa Variant and officially referred to as B.1.351), the Gamma Variant (formerly called the Brazil Variant and officially referred to as P.1), and the Delta Variant (formerly called the India Variant and officially referred to as B.1.617.2).<\/p>\n
The World Health Organization (WHO) has named the variant B.1.621 \u2013 Mu, a variant of interest, describing it as one that has genetic differences to the other known variants and is causing infections in multiple countries.<\/p>\n
The latest strain of the coronavirus is more transmittable and able to escape the immune response making it more dangerous..<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Ministry of Health and Wellness in St Vincent and the Grenadines has confirmed the presence of the Mu COVID-19 variant in that country. The ministry said in a media release issued last night that on review of sequencing results…","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":273700,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_cbd_carousel_blocks":"[]","footnotes":""},"categories":[265,282,17,235,9,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-273691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-covid-19","category-covid-19-news","category-health","category-homepage-carousel","category-news","category-regional"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n