How Did Latin America Face the SARS-CoV-2 Variants?

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused more than 690 million infections and more than 6.9 million deaths worldwide. Despite the rapid and successful development of several effective vaccines against this infection, variants with an increased ability to transmit and evade immunity conferred by previous infections or vaccines have emerged among viral lineages. There are five variants of concern (VOCs) of SARS-CoV-2 that have circulated, with the Omicron variant being the last and the one that displaced the previous ones. In addition to the VOCs, several variants of interest (VOIs) have been identified. The five VOCs were found to circulate in Latin America (LA), and one of them, the Gamma VOC, emerged in Brazil. Additionally, two VOIs emerged in the region: the Lambda VOI and the Mu VOI, which emerged in Peru and Colombia, respectively. The World Health Organization (WHO) recommended genomic surveillance of these variants through whole-genome sequencing. This surveillance has been carried out unevenly among different countries and geographical regions of the world. LA, accounting for 8% of the world population and almost 12% of the total COVID-19 reported cases, contributed to only 3.4% of the viral genomic sequences, and great variability was observed among different countries. However, some countries adopted alternative rapid strategies to effectively conduct genomic surveillance, such as real-time PCR using variant-specific probes, or partial viral genome sequencing. In conclusion, even with somehow limited sequencing capacities, the LA region could describe the emergence distribution and evolution of the SARS-CoV-2 variants in real time.