The New COVID Strain— EG.5 SARS-COV-2 SUB-VARIANT

Elabor Awelu

On August 9, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced EG.5 as a new variant Covid Strain, following the recent increase in the number of cases reported.

This is coming three years after the 2020 Covid–19 pandemic that ravaged the world and displaced many souls.

As of the 24th of August, over 1,300 sequences have been reported from over 59 countries in five regions globally. So far, only one case of this latest variant has been seen in Africa and it has not been identified in Nigeria. But despite this, what is more alarming is that since the declaration of COVID–19 as a global pandemic in 2020, several strains of the virus continue to surface, putting people in a sorry state.

What these could further point to is that the world might not be free from COVID strain and we might have to start living with it as a casual disease. The implication of this sad reality is that for people in developing countries like Nigeria that the healthcare system is still below par, this could mean more death cases since the government is not focused on advancing healthcare infrastructures for better treatment.
For instance, in addition to the increase in cases in affected places, there has also been a reported increase in hospitalization in countries like Japan, the Republic of Korea, United Kingdom and the United States with records showing that people are recuperating well. But in Africa, instead, there is still a lot of sensitization by relevant health authorities like the Africa CDC to prepare governments ahead, advising them to revamp their testing measures and accelerate the immunization of high-risk populations as well as strengthening their sentinel surveillance system to monitor the trends across the continent.

The emergence of this new strain, according to relevant health authorities, underscores the usage of preventive gadgets like mask-wearing, hand-hygiene, and maintaining physical distance as was the case with the COVID–19 variant. The World Health Organisation (WHO) says it requires special attention to treat due to its contagiousness and severity. But with this continuous spread of this variant, it is a call for governments, especially those of developing countries to invest heavily in the health sector so as to help the fight against this virus.

Also, a lot of proper awareness needs to go into carrying the people along about the trends of the virus. The people need to be advised on adherence to public health directives and vaccination efforts to keep them safe from infection. From time to time, the people need to be informed and provided with further guidance to respond quickly to disease threats.