2023-08-16 19:04:58
Should we be worried about this new variant of Covid-19? Should we be afraid of it? We knew it, the Moroccan health authorities repeat it every week, the Covid-19 pandemic is not over. She is far from behind us. If we have faced and succeeded in stemming the danger, variants are appearing and other threats are possible. As is the case today with this new variant descending from Omicron, which was the subject of a circular from the Ministry of Health and Social Protection, dated August 11, 2023.
This document draws the attention of all the regional health directorates to ensure that the protocols for the fight against the virus, in all its variants, are continued, following the measures and decisions established by the national health authorities. This approach responds to the global health situation which recorded an 80/100 increase in contamination in the space of 28 days, i.e. from July 10 to August 6, 2023. An upsurge which occurs at the end of the summer season and which raises many problems and serious risks due to the mobility of populations during holidays and their passage from one continent to another, thus carrying the virus and rapidly increasing the number of cases.
For the Minister of Health and Social Protection, Khalid Ait Taleb, things are clear: “Although the public health emergency of international concern, linked to Covid-19, was declared over on May 5, 2023, SARS -CoV-2 remains a major public health threat worldwide. An 80% increase in the number of cases has been reported by the WHO. The EG.5 line, descendant of the Omicron variant, was considered as a variant of interest (VOI) on August 9, 2023, due to its propagation properties and potential immune evasion characteristics”, specifies the Minister.
In this sense, the new EG.5 version of Covid-19 is called Eris by the researchers. It is the subject of great vigilance on the part of the Ministry of Health, which has put all the means in place to prevent the spread of this new variant. This requires clear measures:
• The availability of rapid antigen tests in all healthcare facilities and systematic testing (PCR or ART) of anyone meeting the definition of a suspected case of Covid-19.
• Compliance with the therapeutic protocol for case management and the indications for hospitalization.
• Weekly notification to the CNOUSP-DELM of aggregate surveillance data and, in real time, cases of severe Covidosis and deaths.
• Sending of positive samples to sequencing laboratories in coordination with the CNOUSP-DELM.
• The organization of coordination and awareness meetings for health professionals from both the public and private sectors, and education sessions for patients on healthy behavior during the acute phase of the disease.
Faced with these measures put in place, the Ministry of Health insistently recalls the importance of vaccination, which remains an effective means of combating the virus.
In this sense, the authorities ensure the availability of vaccines at the level of all health centers in urban and rural areas, in coordination with the Directorate of Supply of Medicines and Health Products and the Directorate of Population. . The ministry is also ensuring the integration of “anti-SARS-CoV-2 vaccination into the services of the mobile team: Targeting the vulnerable population, elderly subjects and/or subjects with comorbidities”, without forgetting to set up an awareness campaign for the general population on the interest of vaccination, which has proven itself and which has saved millions of lives in Morocco: “I attach importance to strengthening anti-SARS-CoV-2 vaccination and maintaining procedures for monitoring and responding to Covid-19”, insists the Minister of Health.
To better understand this new variant, several specialists say that Eris “seems more transmissible than the XBB variants which it quickly supplants”, explains Professor Antoine Flahault, director of the Geneva Institute of Global Health in Switzerland. And to add that this new variant “is not associated with any particular symptomatology or virulence… The people at risk of severe forms are still immunocompromised people and the very elderly”.
However, the WHO remains cautious since it added the “Eris” variant to its list of strains under surveillance in mid-July 2023. “We may have to deal with a new wave early this autumn, without it necessarily being more substantial than those of the last twelve months… And we have no information on the potential for long Covid associated with this new strain of the virus.”
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