There’s a new coronavirus variant topping the leaderboard in the United States: EG.5.
Nationally, EG.5 is causing about 17% of new Covid-19 cases in the country, compared with 16% for the next most common lineage, XBB.1.16, according to the latest estimates from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Your recent cold could be Covid-19, as the nation goes into a late summer wave EG may sound like a whole new flavor of the virus, but it’s not; it’s a spinoff of the XBB recombinant strain of the Omicron family. And it represents another incremental tweak to the virus rather than a major evolutionary leap like the original Omicron strain.
Source: New variant EG.5 is on the rise as Covid-19 cases and hospitalizations go up | CNN