In December 2020, scientists from the Faculty of Microbiology of the University of Costa Rica (UCR) and the Costa Rican Institute for Research and Teaching in Nutrition and Health (Inciensa) concluded there is a local strain of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
This mutation does not make the virus more lethal, contagious or aggressive, researchers say, though the strain is becoming more common in Costa Rica.
In the December 2020 report, the so-called T1117I variant registered a presence of 14.5% in the 138 cases studied. A January 2021 report shows that that number has increased to 29.2%. This significantly exceeds the strain’s international frequency of under 1%.