Health

Possibility of new Covid-19 variants really high, warns WHO

kari waker 3 years ago 2 min read

Describing the new Covid-19 variant as “Wild Card”, an official of the Top World Health Organization has warned that Omicron will not be the last and the possibility of other new variants is very high.

During a question and answer session that immediately switched about the social media platform on Tuesday, WHO Covid-19 Technical Lead Maria Van Kerkhove said that the global health agency tracked four different omicron versions.

“We know a lot about this virus, but we don’t know everything. And frankly, the variant is a wild card. So we track this virus in real time when mutating because of change, this virus has a lot of space to move,” he said.

“Omicron is a variant of the latest concern. It won’t be the last variant of the worries that will be discussed. The next one, you know, it will come, it will take time to get there. But with the level of deployment intensity, it’s likely that we will have another variant. Height, “he said.

“So we need to make sure that we will not only increase vaccination coverage, but we also take steps to reduce the spread,” he added.

Since the designation of B.1.1.529 as a variant of concern on November 26, 2021, several lineet have been identified.

This includes the lineage of Pango Ba.1, BA.1.1, BA.2 and BA.3, all of which are monitored by the omicron umbrella ‘.

“BA.2 is more contagious than BA.1 so we hope to see BA.2 increasing detection throughout the world,” Van Kerkhove said.

According to the Weekly Epidemiology Report the UN Health Agency, which was released on Tuesday, the omicron variant was increasingly dominant – making almost 97 percent of all cases.

“The prevalence of omicron variants has increased globally and is now detected in almost all countries. However, many countries report the initial increase in the number of cases because the Omicron variant has now reported a decline in the total number of new cases since the beginning of January 2022,” he said.