Situation Report of MPOX in Global and ASEAN Region - 10 Augustus 2023

Global Updates

• Worldwide, over 693 million cases and over 6 million deaths have been attributed to COVID-19.

• World Health Organization (WHO): The EG.5 coronavirus strain has been designated by the World Health Organization (WHO) as a "variant of interest" in the US and China, however it does not provide a greater risk to public health than other variants. The virus has been on the rise across the nation as a result of the fast-spreading form, which is the most common in the US and has been found in China, South Korea, Japan, and Canada. According to the WHO, the information currently available does not indicate that circulating EG.5 has higher public health concerns than other Omicron descendant lineages. It is necessary to do a more thorough assessment of the risk presented by EG.5. Since the virus's emergence, COVID-19 has caused the deaths of over 6.9 million individuals worldwide and over 768 million verified cases.

• US CDC: EG.5 is a spinoff of the XBB recombinant strain of the Omicron family, representing an incremental tweak to the virus rather than a major evolutionary leap. It has an extra mutation at position 465, which has appeared in other coronavirus variants before (Goodman, 2023). This mutation is present in about 35% of coronavirus sequences reported worldwide, including another rising in prevalence in the Northeast, FL.1.5.1. The offshoot, EG.5.1, adds a second mutation to the spike and is spreading rapidly. Both variants are only slightly more resistant to neutralizing antibodies in the serum of infected and vaccinated persons. EG.5 is growing rapidly in Ireland, France, the UK, Japan, and China. The World Health Organization upgraded its status from a variant under monitoring to a variant of interest on Wednesday. The variant has become the most prevalent in the US just as cases, emergency room visits, and hospitalizations are going up. Epidemiologists think human behavior is the engine for this uptick, with record heat driving more people indoors for air conditioning, summer travel sending people outside their normal social circles, and school going back into session in many parts of the country. However, there are reasons to be hopeful that this wave of cases won't be so bad. Levels of virus detected in wastewater in August are about where they were in March.

• USA: COVID-19 hospitalizations have increased by 12.5% between July 23 and 29, indicating a comeback (DuRose, 2023). The CDC reports a 10.5% increase in locations reporting their highest levels of SARS-CoV-2 in sewage wastewater, despite a decrease in cities reporting the virus in their wastewater. This summer uptick coincides with a new dominant strain of the virus, EG.5, which is causing 17.3% of current COVID-19 cases in the US. The EG.5 variant descended from the omicron variant, which caused an explosive outbreak in late 2021 and early 2022. The World Health Organization upgraded EG.5 from a variant "under monitoring" to one of "interest," meaning it could pose an increased risk to global public health. Several countries with rising EG.5 prevalence have seen increases in cases and hospitalizations, but there is no evidence of an increase in disease severity directly associated with EG.5. Infectious disease experts agree that the new variant is worth paying attention, but caution is advised. COVID-19's impact on the US healthcare system remains low compared to the last three summers.