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Thursday, March 27, 2025

WHO declares new variant of interest

by

Rishard Khan
595 days ago
20230809

Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

Al­though the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic has of­fi­cial­ly end­ed, on­go­ing glob­al mon­i­tor­ing has led the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WHO) to de­clare a new Vari­ant of In­ter­est (VOI).

The VOI, EG.5, is a sub­lin­eage of the Omi­cron Vari­ant of Con­cern (VOC). Ac­cord­ing to GI­SAID, two cas­es of the new VOI were de­tect­ed in T&T, first on June 29 and then on Ju­ly 13.

EG.5 was first re­port­ed on Feb­ru­ary 17 and des­ig­nat­ed as a vari­ant un­der mon­i­tor­ing (VUM) on Ju­ly 19.

A WHO re­lease on its Ini­tial Risk As­sess­ment not­ed that as of Au­gust 7, 7354 se­quences of Omi­cron EG.5 were sub­mit­ted to GI­SAID from 51 coun­tries. The largest por­tion of se­quences are from Chi­na (30.6 per cent) fol­lowed by the Unit­ed States (18.4 per cent) and the Re­pub­lic of Ko­rea (14.1 per cent). Oth­er coun­tries with at least 100 se­quences are Japan, Cana­da, Aus­tralia, Sin­ga­pore, the Unit­ed King­dom, France, Por­tu­gal, and Spain.

While the WHO notes with con­cern the VOI's grow­ing preva­lence glob­al­ly, it places its pub­lic health risk as "low."

"While EG.5 has shown in­creased preva­lence, growth ad­van­tage, and im­mune es­cape prop­er­ties, there have been no re­port­ed changes in dis­ease sever­i­ty to date. While con­cur­rent in­creas­es in the pro­por­tion of EG.5 and COVID-19 hos­pi­tal­iza­tions (low­er than pre­vi­ous waves) have been ob­served in coun­tries such as Japan and the Re­pub­lic of Ko­rea, no as­so­ci­a­tions have been made be­tween these hos­pi­tal­iza­tions and EG.5," the WHO said.

It, how­ev­er, not­ed that due to its growth ad­van­tage and im­mune es­cape char­ac­ter­is­tics, EG.5 may cause a rise in case in­ci­dence and be­come dom­i­nant in some coun­tries or even glob­al­ly.

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