WHO tracking new EG.5 coronavirus variant

The World Health Organisation is currently tracking several coronavirus variants, including the EG.5 variant that is spreading in the US and UK, Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Wednesday. “The risk remains of a more dangerous variant emerging that could cause a sudden increase in cases and deaths,” Tedros said, adding that the agency is publishing a risk evaluation report on it today.

WHO on Wednesday also 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. COVID-19 hospital admissions have inched upward in the United States since early July in a small-scale echo of the three previous summers.

With an updated vaccine still months away, this summer bump in new hospitalizations might be concerning, but the number of patients is far lower than before. For the week ending July 29, COVID-19 hospital admissions were at 9,056. That’s an increase of about 12% from the previous week.

But it’s a far cry from past peaks, like the 44,000 weekly hospital admissions in early January, the nearly 45,000 in late July 2022, or the 150,000 admissions during the omicron surge of January 2022. “It is ticking up a little bit, but it’s not something that we need to raise any alarm bells over,” said Dr. David Dowdy, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

It’s likely that infections are rising too, but the data is scant. Federal authorities ended the public health emergency in May, so the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and many states no longer track the number of positive test results. Since early June, about 500 to 600 people have died each week. The number of deaths appears to be stable this summer, although past increases in deaths have lagged behind hospitalizations.