A new EG.5 variant of Coronavirus is said to be spreading around the US and World, according to report from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Quoting from the World Health Organization (WHO), BBC News reports that the new strain “poses a low risk to public health, with no evidence that it causes more severe disease than other variants circulating at the moment”.
The EG.5 variant, which said to include a strain with a subgroup of variants designated as EG.5.1, is nicknamed as “Eris” by a biology professor, T. Ryan Gregory, CNBC News reports.
The WHO website says that people have been sick in 51 countries, including China, the US, Korea, Japan, Canada, Australia, Singapore, UK, Portugal, and Spain.
The new strain causes similar symptoms as the previous strains, such as fever, continuous cough, change in sense of taste or smell, fatigue, runny nose, and sore throat.
Covid-19 Bump in Twin Cities
Star Tribune reports that Covid-19 related illness and hospitalization have increased in the Twin Cities hospitals since the 4th of July holidays. “While the post-holiday bump is not necessarily a sign of another COVID-19 surge, health officials said it is a reminder of the infection risk. Nationally, hospitalizations increased more than 12% over the last reporting week, when the new EG.5 coronavirus variant became the dominant source of COVID-19.”
Michael Osterholm, director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, told Star Tribune “the increase needs to be kept in perspective, because 9,000 U.S. COVID-19 hospitalizations were reported in the final week of July compared to 44,000 during the same week last year.”
“Do I think there will be another big surge? I don’t. I still sleep with one eye open with this virus, because we have to look at these mutations that are occurring and these variants. But I just don’t see a variant yet that is going to get us back to anything the size of the previous big peaks,” Dr. Osterholm added.
According to Star Tribune “EG.5 was found in May in Minnesota through genetic sequencing of a sampling of positive coronavirus specimens at the state’s public health lab. The variant made up 7% of viral samples tested in mid-July, trailing various mutations of the XBB variant as the dominant cause of COVID-19 in Minnesota this summer.”