A new strain of Covid-19 spread throughout China over the summer to account for over 70 per cent of infections but its public health risk remains low, according to health authorities.
“The proportion of the EG.5 variant among circulating strains of the coronavirus grew from 0.6 per cent in April to 71.6 per cent in August. It has become the dominant strain in most provinces in China and is likely to continue this trend,” the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said on its WeChat account on Saturday.
“EG.5’s prevalence is mainly due to its enhanced ability to escape immunity, reducing the neutralising ability of antibodies produced by previous infections.”
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EG.5, also known as Eris, is a sub-branch of the Omicron XBB.1.9.2 strain and was first found in Indonesia in February.
By Thursday it had been detected in at least 52 countries and regions.
The World Health Organization (WHO) reclassified it as a “variant of interest” on August 9 but said the global risk level for the variant was low.
“While EG.5 has shown increased prevalence, growth advantage, and immune escape properties, there have been no reported changes in disease severity to date. The public health risk posed by EG.5 is evaluated as low at the global level,” the WHO said.
XBB and its subvariants account for 99.1 per cent of Covid-19 cases in China.
The CDC said researchers saw no major differences in clinical symptoms between cases caused by EG.5 and other XBB sub-branches.
“China experienced an infection wave of the XBB series variants between April and June, the established immunity among the public provides effective protection against the new EG.5 variant,” it said.
“The overall Covid-19 situation in China has remained at a low level, with a wavelike pattern. Little pressure has been posed to the health system across the country, and there is no indication of a large-scale outbreak in the short term.”
Earlier this month the CDC also reported that among people with flu-like symptoms, 13.4 per cent had Covid by the end of July, up from 12 per cent by the middle of the month.
More from South China Morning Post:
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- WHO classifies Eris as Covid-19 ‘variant of interest’
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