2023-08-25 17:30:52
The G.5 of the coronavirus has become the most frequent subvariant in China.
Courtesy | The WHO has classified G.5 as a subvariant of interest and BA.2.86 as a variant under surveillance
The World Health Organization (WHO) came out today to ask countries not to abandon surveillance of the virus that causes covid-19, after noting an increase in hospitalizations, admissions to intensive care units and deaths in certain countries.
“We continue to ask all countries to strengthen surveillance, (virus genetic) sequencing and notifications so that we can assess the risk of new variants such as EG.5 and BA.2.86,” the director general of the organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
Both are newly identified sublineages of the omicron variant, but there is no evidence that they pose any greater health risk than previously circulating subvariants.
The G.5 coronavirus has become the most frequent subvariant in China, where it accounts for more than 70% of covid-19 infections, after being first reported last February.
This trend has also been observed in some countries in the Americas, such as Canada, Colombia, Costa Rica, the United States and the Dominican Republic, although without indications of changes in the severity of the disease, according to the Pan American Health Organization.
BA.2.86 was first observed last month and has since been detected primarily in Israel, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
The WHO has classified G.5 as a subvariant of interest and BA.2.86 as a variant under surveillance due to the considerable number of mutations it has in the spicule genes.
Out of a total of 234 countries and territories, currently only 19 notify WHO about covid-19 hospitalizations; In addition, 17 provide data on admissions to intensive care (ICU) and there are data on deaths from 54 countries, the person in charge of the fight against covid-19 at the WHO, María Van Kherkov, told the press.
“Although we are certainly not in the same pandemic situation as a year or two ago, the virus is circulating right now in all countries and continues to cause a large number of infections and hospitalizations, ICU admissions and deaths,” he stressed. .
Despite this, “we do not have visibility of what is happening,” he lamented.
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