NCDC To Continue Monitoring Covid-19 EG.5 Variant

The world health organisation says it has conducted a risk assessment which found that the new EG.5 variant poses low risk at a global level.

But the Nigeria centre for disease control and prevention still insists that it will continue to monitor situations around the globe especially in countries where the new subvariants of the omicron variant of the Sars cov 2 virus have been confirmed.

This comes on the heels of the discovery of new variants named EG.5 and BA. 2. 86 which are descendant of the XBB.1.9.2 of the omicron variant.

The new variant EG.5 has already been recorded across fifty-one countries like the United States, China, Japan, Australia, Spain and others.

It has been classified as a variant of interest by the world health organisation.

So far, only one case of EG.5 has been seen in Africa and has not yet been identified in Nigeria.

The EG.5 variant causes symptoms like those seen with other COVID-19 variants, including fever, cough, shortness of breath, fatigue, muscle aches, headache, and sore throat.

The recently discovered BA.2.86 is a descendent lineage of BA.2 a sub lineage of Omicron, also found in Nigeria in 2022.

Recent data shows that nine cases of the BA.2.86 variant sequences have been reported globally: Denmark (3); South Africa (2); Israel (1); United States (2) and United Kingdom (1).

One of the cases in the United States is in a person detected through the United States centre for disease control’s Traveler-based Genomic Surveillance.

According to findings by the US CDC, existing tests used to detect, and medications used to treat COVID-19 appear to be effective with this variant.

The BA.2.86 may be more capable of causing infection in people who have previously had COVID-19 or who have received COVID-19 vaccines.

It is too soon to know if this variant might cause more severe illness compared with previous variants, especially with only nine cases detected

It is also too soon to know how transmissible this variant is.

The NCDC still advises the elderly, those with underlying chronic illnesses especially hypertension, diabetes, those on cancer treatment, organ transplant recipients and those whose immune systems are suppressed for one reason or the other, to consistently take extra precautions and observe all preventive protocols.