Omicron could not be the last variant of Covid-19: WHO Chief-Scientist
New Delhi: The World Health Organization’s (WHO) Chief Scientist, Soumya Swaminathan, has expressed her views on Friday. She said, “the world is not yet at the end of the COVID-19 pandemic. We have seen the virus evolve, mutate, so we know there will be more variants, more variants of concern, so we are not at the end of the pandemic.”
The statement arrived during a visit to vaccine manufacturing facilities with WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
Earlier, a senior WHO official cautioned that the possibility of other new variants is high, and the Omicron will not be the last strain.
Terming the new COVID-19 variants as the ‘wild card’, WHO COVID-19 Technical Lead Maria Van Kerkhove said that the global health agency is tracking four different versions of Omicron.
“We know a lot about this virus, but we don’t know everything. And quite frankly, the variants are the wild card. So we are tracking this virus in real-time as it mutates as it changes, but this virus has a lot of room to move,” she said.
“Omicron is the latest variant of concern. It will not be the last variant of concern that WHO will speak about. The next one, you know, that will come hopefully, it will take some time to get there. But with the level of intensity of spread, the possibility that we will have other variants is really high,” she said.
Even as the world limps back to normalcy with the Omicron wave subsiding, experts have warned that the next Covid-19 variant will be more transmissible, and perhaps, more deadly than its predecessors.
(_Vinayak)
