In early 2021, scientists in Colombia discovered a worrisome new coronavirus variant. This variant, eventually known as mu, had several troubling mutations that experts believed could help it evade the immune system¡¯s defenses.
Over the following months, mu spread swiftly in Colombia, fueling a new surge of COVID-19 cases. By the end of August, it had been detected in dozens of countries, and the World Health Organization had designated it a ¡°variant of interest.¡±
¡°Mu was starting to make some noise globally,¡± said Joseph Fauver, a genomic epidemiologist at the University of Nebraska Medical Center and an author of a recent study on the variant.
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