Domination of COVID-19 Cases in the United States, WHO Calls The Eris an Interesting Variant

Illustration of WHO headquarters. (Wikimedia Commons/Thorkild Tylleskar)

JAKARTA - The World Health Organization (WHO) on Wednesday classified the EG.5 coronavirus strain circulating in the United States as a "variant of interest", although it said it did not appear to pose more of a threat to public health than the other variants.

The fast-spreading variant, found mostly in the United States, accounting for more than 17 percent of cases, has been the reason for the increase in the virus across the country, having also been detected in a number of countries, such as China, South Korea, Japan and Canada.

"Collectively, the available evidence does not suggest that EG.5 poses an additional public health risk relative to other Omicron lineages currently in circulation," WHO said in its risk evaluation.

A more comprehensive evaluation of the risks posed by EG.5 is needed, he added.

Quoting CBS News, the EG.5 or Eris variant dominated COVID-19 cases in the US until Friday last week with a percentage of 17.3 percent. Behind him are XBB.1.16 (15.6), XBB.2.23 (11.2) and XBB.1.5 (10.3).

Meanwhile, Maria van Kerkhove, WHO technical lead for COVID-19, said EG.5 has increased transmissibility, but is not more severe than other Omicron variants.

"We did not detect any change in the severity of EG.5 compared to other Omicron substrains that have been circulating since late 2021," explained van Kerkhove.

Separately, WHO Director General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said, besides EG.5, his party was also looking at several other COVID-19 variants.

"The risk remains that a more dangerous variant may emerge which could cause a sudden increase in cases and deaths," he was quoted as saying on the UN website.

Dr. Tedros regretted that many countries did not report COVID-19 data to WHO. He said, only 11 percent of countries reported hospitalization and admission of patients in the ICU related to the virus.

In response to this, WHO issued a series of recommendations for COVID, in which WHO urged countries to continue to report COVID data, especially death data, morbidity data, and continue to offer vaccinations.

Van Kerkhove said the absence of data from many countries hampered efforts to combat this virus.

"About a year ago, we were in a much better situation to anticipate or act or be more agile," he said.

"And now the delay in our ability to do that is increasing. And our ability to do this is decreasing," he continued.

It is known that COVID-19 has killed more than 6.9 million people worldwide, with more than 768 million confirmed cases since this virus appeared. WHO declared this outbreak a pandemic in March 2020 and ended the global emergency status for COVID-19 in May this year.