After nearly 2 years of lockdown, quarantine, medications, masks, and vaccination, everyone had enough of COVID-19. But, perhaps, Covid seems never-ending. WHO warns of a high possibility of new variants. A top WHO official has cautioned that the new COVID-19 variants are the “wild card,” and that the Omicron will not be the last, with the probability of a new COVID-19 variant being quite high.
In a live communication session on WHO’s social media platforms on Tuesday, WHO COVID-19 Technical Lead Maria responded to a few queries. Thereby, notifying that four new variants of Omicron are being tracked by the organization.
“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 added.
Omicron not the last variant of concern
The UN health agency’s weekly epidemiological report was announced on Tuesday. It announced that the Omicron variant is coming to be increasingly prominent, accounting for roughly 97% of all cases.
“The prevalence of the Omicron variant is increased globally and is now detected in almost all countries. However, many of the countries which reported an early rise in the number of cases due to the Omicron variant have now reported a decline in the total number of new cases since the beginning of January 2022,” it said.
There was the discovery of some sub-variants after B.1.1.529 was specified as a variant of concern on November 26, 2021. Pango lineages BA.1, BA.1.1, BA.2, and BA.3 are among them. They’re all undergoing trials by WHO under the Omicron’s banner.