VARIANT AT LARGE

A new strain of Covid is worrying global health experts. How concerned should we be in South Africa?

- NASIFA SULAIMAN

IN MANY ways it seems like a distant nightmare. People have returned to the office, traffic is back to normal and seeing someone in a mask is more the exception than the norm.

But all this doesn't mean Covid is a thing of the past. Just as experts warned, new variants continue to rear their heads as life goes on because that's what viruses do - they mutate to survive.

Right now EG.5, or Eris as it's been dubbed, is the one on the march and it's causing nervous flutters around the globe.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has classified it as "a variant of interest" and indicated it should be watched so that health experts are aware of it should it become more contagious or severe.

Eris has been detected in more than 50 countries and infections and hospitalisations are on the rise in China, the US, South Korea, Japan, Canada, Australia, Singapore, the UK, France, Portugal and Spain.

Early in August the SA department of health confirmed the first Eris case had been identified in Gauteng. But experts say we shouldn't be too worried.

"While the EG.5 lineage has been detected in a few samples in South Africa, the number of specimens submitted for Covid testing and sequencing remains low," says Professor Hannelie Meyer, head of the SA Vaccination and Immunisation Centre and member of the department of public health pharmacy and management at Sefako Makgatho Health Sciences University (SMHSU).

MORE ABOUT ERIS

The EG.5 is a sub-variant of Omicron and Eris is a nickname given to it by scientists in other words, it's not an official name supplied by WHO.

"It contains one particular mutation that's known to evade some of the immunity you get after a Covid infection or vaccination, Meyer tells YOU.

Dr Scott Roberts, an infectious diseases specialist at Yale University, says Eris isn't very different to other variants.