On August 9, 2023 the World Health Organization (WHO) designated EG.5 and its sub-lineages as a variant of interest (VOI). This variant has been dubbed “Eris“. “The virus has changed, incrementally, making EG.5.1 more transmissible“, and “indicating that it should be more closely watched than others because of mutations that might make it more contagious or severe”, though the public health risk is low. [1, 2, 3, 7, 8]
Within the week Pfizer announced new variant vaccine effective in mice, making it the 8th booster vaccine. Then in under a week the media start reporing the need for re-masking!
The CDC/media is pushing it as a new threat. “It’s been almost a year since the last booster [shot] came out”, the new one is expected by the 2nd or 3rd Week of Sept. [4, 5, 6]
“The booster is tailored to what we are seeing circulating now…”…”just like we do with our flu shots”!
Mandy Cohen, new CDC Director
Dr Scott Gottlieb begins planting the new lexicon for COVID-19 “strain” as different to “variant” which is alrady documented in US govt NextGen preparedness notifications.
“This new variant is as genetically different from Omicron as Omicron was from the original strain that emerged in Wuhan so this is a highly mutated variant” [9]