this post was submitted on 07 Aug 2023
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A new COVID-19 variant has emerged. Here's what we know about EG.5 so far (www.ctvnews.ca)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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The variant is called EG.5 and is a descendant of Omicron.

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that EG.5 accounted for roughly 17.3 per cent β€” or one in six β€” of new COVID-19 cases in the U.S. in the past two weeks.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The problem is that the latest vaccines don't contain the latest variant - they're always going to be behind the curve because it takes time to develop them after a new variant emerges.

For example, here in NZ, we're still giving people the bivalent mix designed for the omicron BA.4/BA.5 variant (and the ones before it) which is now about 2 years old and hasn't been seen here for about 9 months.

There's a non-zero level of protection from those vaccines, but they're not keeping up with the virus in real time.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

This is another major reason I have not stayed current with my boosters. What is the point of using something based on a strain that has not been seen for 9 months, and is in fact 2 years old? It doesn't make a great deal of sense to me.

Sure it will offer SOME ability to improve the immune response to a CV19 variant given how short-lived the protection from natural infection and vaccination seems to be, but it certainly isn't going to be anywhere near as good as it could be. I'm still going to get horrifically sick again.