LONDON
\nThe World Health Organization on Wednesday classified the EG.5 coronavirus strain circulating in the United States and China as a \u201cvariant of interest\u201d but said it did not seem to pose more of a threat to public health than other variants.
\nThe fast-spreading variant, the most prevalent in the United States with an estimated more than 17 percent of cases, has been behind upticks in the virus across the country and also has been detected in China, South Korea, Japan and Canada, among other countries.
\n\u201cCollectively, available evidence does not suggest that EG.5 has additional public health risks relative to the other currently circulating omicron descendent lineages,\u201d the WHO said in a risk evaluation.
\nA more comprehensive evaluation of the risk posed by EG.5 was needed, it added.
\nCOVID-19 has killed more than 6.9 million people globally, with more than 768 million confirmed cases since the virus emerged. WHO declared the outbreak a pandemic in March 2020 and ended the global emergency status for COVID-19 in May this year.
\nMaria Van Kerkhove, the WHO\u2019s technical lead on COVID-19, said EG.5 had an increased transmissibility but was not more severe than other omicron variants.
\n\u201cWe don\u2019t detect a change in severity of EG.5 compared to other sublineages of omicron that have been in circulation since late 2021,\u201d she said.
\nDirector General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus deplored that many countries were not reporting COVID-19 data to WHO.
\nHe said that only 11 percent had reported hospitalizations and ICU admissions related to the virus.
\nIn response, WHO issued a set of standing recommendations for COVID, in which it urged countries to continue reporting COVID data, particularly mortality data, morbidity data, and to continue to offer vaccination.
\nVan Kerkhove said that the absence of data from many countries was hindering efforts to fight the virus.
\n\u201cAbout a year ago, we were in a much better situation to either anticipate or act or be more agile,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd now the delay in our ability to do that is growing. And our ability to do this is declining.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
LONDON The World Health Organization on Wednesday classified the EG.5 coronavirus strain circulating in the United States and China as a \u201cvariant of interest\u201d but said it did not seem to pose more of a threat to public health than other variants. The fast-spreading variant, the most prevalent in the United States with an estimated […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":202873,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[785],"class_list":{"0":"post-348280","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-who"},"yoast_head":"\n