{"id":4369,"date":"2023-08-15T20:58:18","date_gmt":"2023-08-16T01:58:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=4369"},"modified":"2023-08-16T10:47:38","modified_gmt":"2023-08-16T15:47:38","slug":"new-covid-eris-variant-the-symptoms-how-dangerous-it-is-and-whether-vaccines-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2023\/08\/15\/new-covid-eris-variant-the-symptoms-how-dangerous-it-is-and-whether-vaccines-work\/","title":{"rendered":"New COVID ‘Eris’ variant: The symptoms, how dangerous it is and whether vaccines work"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Yahoo News <\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s a new COVID-19 variant dominating infections in the U.S. EG.5 \u2014 or \u201cEris,\u201d as it\u2019s been nicknamed \u2014 was identified in China<\/a> in February and detected in the U.S. in April, and now accounts for more than 17%<\/a> of COVID-19 cases nationwide, which is the most of any variant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s what you need to know about the new variant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How do symptoms compare to other COVID-19 variants?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe haven’t seen a radical departure that [EG.5] is going to cause new symptoms or that it’s going to look a lot different,\u201d Dr. David Alain Wohl<\/a>, an infectious diseases professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, tells Yahoo Life. \u201cWe don’t see anything that indicates that the virus is evolving to be more dangerous.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

EG.5 is a subvariant within the Omicron family of coronaviruses, so it\u2019s pretty closely related to the XBB variant that\u2019s been circulating for a while and was dominant months earlier. You can\u2019t tell which variant you have just based on symptoms (that requires genomic sequencing, which isn\u2019t a routine part of clinical care). But you can expect symptoms from EG.5 to look a lot like what we\u2019ve come to know from other COVID-19 variants<\/a>, including:<\/p>\n\n\n\n