THE Mu variant of COVID-19, first detected in Colombia, has spread to 49 U.S. states, India’s Wion news channel reported.

Nebraska is the only U.S. state which hasn’t detected it so far, said the report Tuesday.

The new virus variant is reportedly more transmissible than the Delta variant, which has currently ravaged several parts of the world, said the report.

“The Mu variant has a constellation of mutations that indicate potential properties of immune escape,” the World Health Organization (WHO) was quoted by the report as saying.

In the United States, California has reported the highest number of cases of the Mu variant with 384 cases, according to the report.

The United States reportedly witnessed a peak of the Mu variant cases in mid-July, said the news channel.

While the federal government sharpens new strategy to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, the return of unvaccinated school children to classrooms, cold weather in the northern states and the upcoming holiday season could give the coronavirus new opportunities to spread in the United States, further fueling the cases and hospitalizations consistently on rise.

“I don’t know if we’ve peaked for all time, but the wave that was currently ongoing seems to have crested and is falling in some states but is rising in others,” Andrew Noymer, an infectious disease epidemiologist and demographer at the University of California, Irvine, was quoted on Wednesday by The Wall Street Journal as saying.

According to The New York Times, the 7-day average of confirmed cases of the pandemic stood at 152,393 nationwide on Tuesday, with its 14-day change striking a 1-percent increase.

(Xinhua)