More Variants are likely to emerge from COVID-19 – W.H.O

The World Health Organization has revealed that they more variants likely to emerge from COVID-19, noting that the pandemic is far from Over.

The Director General of the WHO, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, revealed the disturbing discovery on Tuesday, January 18. He gave further warning that people shouldn’t go with the narrative that the Omicron variant is risk free.

The recently discovered Omicron variant is more contagious than previous strains, but seems to cause less serious disease in patients. This has triggered a debate on the virus passing from being a pandemic to becoming endemic – with the implication that the danger will have passed.

Dr. Tedros, however, stated that the pandemic is far from over, noting that a huge number of people are infected, which means many vulnerable people will still fall ill and die

His Words: ‘This pandemic is nowhere near over, Omicron may be less severe, on average, but the narrative that it is a mild disease is misleading,’

‘Make no mistake, Omicron is causing hospitalisations and deaths, and even the less severe cases are inundating health facilities.’

He said there were indications that the Omicron-fuelled surge of Covid cases may have peaked in some countries. This, he said, ‘gives hope that the worst of this latest wave is done with, but no country is out of the woods yet.’

‘Now is not the time to give up and wave the white flag, ‘We can still significantly reduce the impact of the current wave by sharing and using health tools effectively, and implementing public health and social measures that we know work.’

‘Vaccines may be less effective at preventing infection and transmission of Omicron than they were for previous variants, but they still are exceptionally good at preventing serious disease and death,’ he said.

‘With the incredible growth of Omicron globally, new variants are likely to emerge,’ Tedros cautioned.