The COVID-19 variation EG.5 manifests symptoms such as fever, cough, shortness of breath, exhaustion, headache, and sore throat.
According to the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (NCDC), it is keeping an eye on the EG.5 and BA.2.86 subvariants of the Omicron variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
The health organisation said in a statement on Saturday that its COVID-19 Technical Working Group has been keeping an eye on new varieties from a local to a global level.
The part of the announcement that said, “Our influenza sentinel surveillance sites continue to provide information on COVID-19 prevalence in patients with influenza-like illness and severe acute respiratory illness,” was the only part that was in English.
“In this patient group, we have not noticed a rise in the COVID-19 trend. Even with the low testing levels, we continue to conduct genomic surveillance and encourage testing sites in states to make sure their positive samples are transmitted to the NCDC for sequencing.
Unrelated to the news of these new variants, the NCDC and its collaborators are preparing to implement an improved COVID-19 testing exercise in four states to gather further and in-depth data regarding variants that are now in circulation in the nation. Furthermore, COVID-19 quick diagnostic kits are being made available in order to enhance bidirectional COVID-19 testing.
The organisation claimed that the same preventive measures still applied, including as using masks, testing, and practising good hand hygiene.
“There is no need to promote needless fear and worry. The elderly, people with chronic illnesses, particularly hypertension and diabetes, people undergoing cancer treatment, people receiving organ transplants, and people whose immune systems are being suppressed for various reasons are now primarily at risk for COVID-19, as we have repeatedly advised.
China, the United States of America, the Republic of Korea, Japan, Canada, Australia, Singapore, the United Kingdom, France, Portugal, and Spain are just a few of the 51 nations where the EG.5 subvariants have been documented.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has identified EG.5 as a “variant of interest” (VOI) and has assessed the risk associated with this novel variant, concluding that there is minimal risk at the global level.
Similar to other COVID-19 variations, EG.5 produces symptoms like fever, coughing, shortness of breath, exhaustion, muscle aches, headaches, and sore throats.
The NCDC reported that while BA.2 has previously been discovered in Nigeria, no BA.2.86 variant has been discovered there. To date, only one case of EG.5 has been observed in Africa; it has not been recognised in Nigeria.
