How the WHO will assess new variants of the coronavirus once the Greek letters are finished

In total, the Greek letters number 24. But before the constant emergence of new variants, the World Health Organization (WHO) this does not exclude that they must choose another type of nomenclature to identify new mutations. According to the technical director of the Covid-19 pandemic within an international organization, Maria Van Kerkhove, then it will be your turn to call them as “stars or constellations”.

“They will be stars or less common constellations, easy to pronounce,” also confirmed the chief epidemiologist of the WHO to science journalist Kai Kupferschmidt, of the prestigious magazine. Science, and added: “Only we check internally with our regional colleagues to ensure none of them cause an offense or are a common name in local languages”.

The truth is that not all mutations manage to be named by the WHO, in order to be able to show identification they must have been considered Variant of interest (VOI) or from Concern (VOC). Same, if they lose this position, their nickname is removed and they only have a scientific characterization which depends on the lineage or the viral family from which it comes.

To explain it by examples, among the worrisome variants, the dreaded Delta (India) is characterized by B.1.617.2 and the Gamma (Manaus) is P.1. While among those of interest the Lambda (Andean) is C.37 and the recently included Mu (Colombian) is B.1.621.

What are the characteristics of the Mu variant

While there were still hours until the end of August, the World Health Organization (WHO) defined by adding a new mutation to the list of Variants of interest (VOI) in the face of the pandemic. Named with the Greek letter Mu, this mutation was first identified in Colombia, in January of this year

Like the last report epidemiological report issued by the international organization, its incorporation is due to the fact that it presents a set of mutations which could indicate that it would have a potential capacity to escape the immune response, both natural (due to infection) as acquired (by vaccination).

“The preliminary data presented to the virus evolution working group revealed a reduced ability to neutralize the virus both in convalescent and vaccinated patients, similar to that observed for the Beta variant (South Africa)They said, although they warned that this peculiarity should be confirmed in further studies.

In any case, they pointed out that, since their identification, they have reported some epidemics in countries in South America and Europe and it has been detected in over 4,500 genomic sequences (people) reported to the WHO Reference Laboratory Network, for which they have indicated that it is already registered in 39 countries. It should be noted that the international body has ensured that the global prevalence of the Mu variant has decreased and is currently below 0.1%, although in Colombia it is 39% and in Ecuador 13% with an increasing trend.