The World Health Organization classified the SARS-CoV-2 EG.5 variant, or eris, as a "variant of interest" on August 9 , but stated that it does not appear to pose a greater threat to public health than others. Meanwhile, he called on countries to continue reporting COVID cases, at the same time that in Europe and the US, cases are rebounding in the middle of the northern summer.
Eris, or EG.5 is one of several closely related Omicron subvariants that have been vying for dominance in recent months. All of these variants are descendants of the XBB strain, which is the target of this fall’s COVID vaccines.
Rapidly spreading, this Omicron sublineage is the most prevalent in the US with more than 17% of estimated cases. It has also been detected in China, South Korea, Japan and Canada, among other countries.
"Taken together, the available evidence does not suggest that EG.5 poses additional risks to public health relative to the other Omicron descendant lineages currently circulating," the WHO said in a risk assessment cited by Reuters, but added that a more thorough assessment of the risk posed by EG.5 is necessary.
However, WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus regretted that many countries are not reporting COVID-19 data to the WHO, and reported that only 11% had reported hospitalizations and ICU admissions related to the virus. . For this reason, the United Nations health agency issued a series of standing recommendations, urging countries to continue reporting COVID data, particularly mortality and morbidity, and to continue offering vaccination.
Meanwhile, according to the latest information , the disease is being transmitted again in the middle of summer in countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom and France, with a so far moderate rebound.
In France, visits to emergency departments due to suspected COVID increased by 31% in the week from July 31 to August 6 compared to the previous week, around 920 patients, according to official data. Similar rates have been detected in the United States, the United Kingdom, India and Japan.
EG.5 is taking hold in the US just as Americans expect an updated COVID vaccine by the fall.
Because the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has slowed its tracking of COVID variants, it was unable to project the emergence of EG.5 until now, with only California, Georgia and New York have had enough sequences to update the national data, CDC officials said. While tens of thousands of sequences were uploaded to virus databases early in the pandemic, there are now fewer than 2,000.
