The variant is called EG.5 and is a descendant of Omicron.
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that EG.5 accounted for roughly 17.3 per cent — or one in six — of new COVID-19 cases in the U.S. in the past two weeks.
No indicator on severity of this strain in the article
This is my issue with the article.
Headline: Here’s what we know about EG.5 so far
Body: Apparently not much. We uhh, know the name of it? Severity, how contagious it may be, symptoms, breakthrough rate…like umm, anything??
sick right now in Ireland (can’t be sure but we’re exploding with this variant)
for me, fatigue, stuffed & runny nose which is making me cough. on day 1 I had a headache but only for that day. I had a fever for about 6 hours. sneezing, gastro fun.
Wife has a dry cough. she had a wicked fever with chills. also gastro fun, which is fun for me by proxy.
Sick right now in Florida, my symptoms pretty closely match yours. Killer headache, scratchy throat, congestion, and fatigue.
It started with being tired on Saturday, and the full brunt hit Monday. Feeling a bit better today. I didnt get much gastro stuff fortunately
That’s because we literally don’t know much. EG.5 has only had 183 sequences submitted to GISAID, and EG.5.1 has had 3400 sequences submitted. This means we only have about 3600 cases confirmed as EG.5, but it’s growth rate since May is crazy fast. 10% of sequences submitted to GISAID by the end of July were for EG.5, compared to 0.02% in May.
Part of the problem is that people have stopped going to the doctor when they can just do a COVID test at home, so we are less able to track individual strains and calculate things like transmission rates. When’s the last time you heard the phrase “contact tracing”?
Source: https://GISAID.org/lineage-comparison and also I work in COVID monitoring.
Presumably as a descendent of omicron… It is probably easier to catch and less serious. But you’d think they’d address it…
“I don’t know that it’s time to worry about this (EG.5) just yet. We know very little about this new variant. There’s currently no evidence to suggest that it causes more severe illness. And the CDC is indicating that it does appear to be susceptible to COVID vaccines, which is good news.”
From an AMA gathering on July 26, (speaker is Andrea Garcia, JD, MPH, vice president, science, medicine & public health, American Medical Association)
Less serious than what? If my aged brain remembers correctly, Omicron severity is comparable to the original strain, only making it less serious than Delta. As I understand it, the primary factor in reduced severity was that vaccines were available and most people got the vaccine.
Other articles has said it’s nothing special. Not any deadlier.
