Who Identifies New Coronavirus ‘Variant of Interest'

The World Health Organisation (WHO) on Wednesday classified a new strain of COVID-19 as a "variant of interest."

The EG.5 variant has been spreading rapidly in the United States, encompassing over 17% of cases.

It has also been detected in China, South Korea, Japan and Canada.

New #COVID19 variant of interest: EG.5.

Formerly a variant under monitoring, WHO has now designated this a variant of interest.

There has been a steady increase in this variant’s prevalence. As of 7 August 2023, over 7000 sequences have been shared from 51 countries.

More… pic.twitter.com/DlDdAPYMos

— World Health Organization (WHO) (@WHO) August 9, 2023

What else do we know about the EG.5 variant of COVID-19?

The WHO said that the new variant does not at present seem to pose an additional public health risk compared to other strains of COVID-19.

"Collectively, available evidence does not suggest that EG.5 has additional public health risks relative to the other currently circulating Omicron descendent lineages," the organisation said.

It said that a more comprehensive evaluation of the risk posed by EG.5 was needed.

The WHO defines a 'variant of interest' as one which likely has growth advantage over circulating variants and can enhance the transmissibility of the virus.

However, of greater significance and rather alarm is a Variant of Concern. Omicron was the last declared VoC of the novel coronavirus. A variant is declared of concern if it causes a change in disease severity, or substantial impact on healthcare systems or a significant decrease in the ability of vaccines to prevent the infection.

Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO's technical lead on COVID-19, said that while EG.5 had increased transmissibility, infections were not more severe than other Omicron variants.

"We don't detect a change in severity of EG.5 compared to other sublineages of Omicron that have been in circulation since late 2021," she said.

Meanwhile, Dr Mandy Cohen, the director of the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said that updated vaccines to be offered in mid-to-late September will provide protection against the variant.

"Right now, what we're seeing with the changes in the viruses, they're still susceptible to our vaccine, they're still susceptible to our medicines, they're still picked up by the tests," Cohen said.

The CDC chief said that the mutations in the virus amounted to "small changes" and "subtypes of what we've seen before."

"We are likely to see this as a recommendation as an annual COVID shot just like we have an annual flu shot," she said.

Countries not reporting COVID-19 data, WHO says

Meanwhile, WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that many countries were not reporting coronavirus data to the organisation.

He said only 11% had reported hospitalisations and ICU admissions related to COVID-19.

The WHO issued a set of recommendations for reporting data on the virus, particularly mortality and morbidity. It also urged countries to continue offering vaccination.

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

"And now the delay in our ability to do that is growing. And our ability to do this is declining."

"What we cannot do right now is give you an accurate statistic of how many deaths are actually occurring for COVID-19," she said.

This article was originally published on DW.

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