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- NCDC strengthens surveillance
From Fred Ezeh, Abuja
The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) announced on Saturday that it is closely monitoring the new subvariants of the Omicron variant of COVID-19, named EG.5 and BA.2.86, explaining that the EG.5 variant is a descendant of XBB.1.9.2 which is a descendant of Omicron.
As of August 23rd, the new variant has been reported in 51 countries including China, the United States of America, the Republic of Korea, Japan, Canada, Australia, Singapore, the United Kingdom, Denmark, South Africa, Israel, France, Portugal, Spain, etc.
World Health Organization (WHO), said it has classified EG.5 as a “Variant of Interest” (VoI) and has also conducted a risk assessment in which they discovered that the new variant poses a low risk at the global level.
WHO added that EG.5 has not been associated with any change in symptoms/clinical manifestation, and has also not produced an increase in severity of illness and/or hospitalisations or difference in death rates in reporting countries.
However, it confirmed that the new variant causes symptoms similar to those seen with other COVID-19 variants, notably, fever, cough, shortness of breath, fatigue, muscle aches, headache, and sore throat, and so far, only one case of EG.5 has been seen in Africa, not Nigeria.
WHO said the new variant has been discovered to have multiple genetic differences that make it substantially different from its ancestor, BA.2 and from other currently circulating XBB-derived SARS-CoV-2 variants.
“Since there are few cases identified so far, there is not enough information to make conclusive assessments of virulence, transmission, and severity of the new variant,” says WHO.
Meanwhile, the Director General of NCDC, Dr Ifedayo Adetifa, in a statement, confirmed that NCDC’s COVID-19 Technical Working Group (COVID-19 TWG) is closely monitoring the development at local, regional, continental, and global levels including emerging variants.
He said: “As we have consistently advised, COVID-19 is here to stay, and is now mainly a problem for those at high risk, notably, 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.
“Nevertheless, we have not observed any increase in the trend of COVID-19 in this patient group. But we would continue to carry out genomics surveillance even with the low testing levels and encourage testing locations in states to ensure their positive samples are sent on to the NCDC for sequencing.”
He said that NCDC and partners are working on implementing an enhanced COVID-19 testing exercise in four states to obtain complementary and more detailed information about circulating variants in the country. “In addition, COVID-19 rapid diagnostic kits are being distributed for the purpose of improving bi-directional COVID-19 testing,” he added.
The NCDC boss said the actions required to protect friends, families and individuals remain the same as before. “Get tested for any febrile illness and respiratory symptoms regardless of how mild; use every opportunity provided to get vaccinated against COVID-19; continue the practice of good hand hygiene by washing hands regularly with soap under running water; and wear a mask if you have flu-like symptoms like coughing, sneezing etc. If you are at risk of severe disease, use a mask in crowded and other high-risk situations.”
He promised that NCDC will continue to monitor situations around the globe, especially in countries where the new variant has been confirmed and keep Nigerians updated as may be required with scientifically sound and evidence-based information on any changes in SARS-COV-2 epidemiology and genomics that may threaten public health.
