New COVID-19 Variant EG.5 Now Dominant in U.S., CDC Says

TUESDAY, Aug. 8, 2023 (HealthDay News) -- A variant nicknamed Eris now accounts for the largest proportion of new COVID-19 infections across America.

About 17.3 percent of U.S. COVID-19 cases are believed to have been caused by the variant, formally known as EG.5, in early August, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That number is 7.5 percent higher than it was in early July.

Other dominant variants include XBB.1.16, with 15.6 percent of cases, and XBB.2.23, with 11.2 percent of cases, CDC data show. Another 10.3 percent of COVID-19 cases are from XBB.1.5, while 8.6 percent of cases were caused by an XBB-related variant known as FL.1.5.1.

Experts say EG.5 might be beating out other variants because it appears to have a "slightly beneficial mutation," CBS News reported. Eris is one of several closely related omicron subvariants that have been competing for dominance in recent months. All of these variants are descendants of the XBB strain, which is the target of this fall's COVID-19 vaccines.

"While the emergency of COVID has been lifted and we're no longer in a crisis phase, the threat of COVID is not gone. So, keeping up with surveillance and sequencing remains absolutely critical," Maria Van Kerkhove, M.D., the World Health Organization technical lead for COVID-19, said in a statement last month.

Because the CDC has slowed its tracking of COVID-19 variants, it was not able to project the emergence of EG.5 until now since only California, Georgia, and New York have had enough sequences to update national data, CDC officials said. While tens of thousands of sequences were uploaded to virus databases earlier in the pandemic, now that is less than 2,000, CBS News reported.

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