WHO warns of potential for more variants as omicron subvariant found in US

The head of the World Health Organization said on Monday that global conditions are still ideal for the emergence of new variant.

The director-general of the World Health Organization said at a meeting Monday that there are different scenarios for how the epidemic could play out. The conditions are ideal for more variations to emerge.

Many US experts and officials are cautiously hopeful that the omicron wave could signal the end of the Pandemic. The country will see a lull in transmission after COVID-19 cases peak and decline. Collective immunity across the US has been boosted by the ultra-transmissible variant, which has caused at least 15.8 million people to be infectious since the start of the year.

Hopes have been dashed before by the Pandemic virus. omicron swept the nation before some areas were able to shake the hyper-transmissible delta variant. Although omicron causes less severe disease than delta, its spread is still overwhelming health care systems in the US and worldwide.

The risk of new variants evolving is heightened with so many people getting infections. A new version of the omicron variant was making headlines as Dr. Tedros made his remarks Monday. The original omicron is called BA.1 and has popped up in dozens of countries. The subvariant is increasing in several countries, such as Britain, and it has been hit hardest by European and Asian nations. At least three US cases have been found in Houston, Texas, but it appears to be only at low levels for now.

The foreseeable future

Researchers stress that there is very little data to make determinations, so so far, the subvariant does not appear to be particularly concerning. In an email to The Washington Post, a Danish virologist reported that the BA.2 variant is now the dominant variant in the country.

There are no major differences in age distribution, vaccine status, or risk of hospitalization so we are not concerned, according to the Post.

The new version of the virus highlights the risk of new variant as transmission remains high around the world. The steps needed to wrestle the pandemic into submission were outlined by Tedros. He said the top priority is to get 70 percent of the world's population vaccine free. Tedros called for continued testing, increased boosting, strong clinical management of cases, and calibrated social and public health measures.

Tedros said:

It's true that we will be living with COVID for the foreseeable future and that we will need to learn to manage it. But learning to live with COVID cannot mean that we give this virus a free ride. It cannot mean that we accept almost 50 thousand deaths a week from a preventable and treatable disease. It cannot mean that we accept an unacceptable burden on our health systems, when every day, exhausted health workers go once again to the front line. It cannot mean that we ignore the consequences of long COVID, which we don’t yet fully understand. It cannot mean that we gamble on a virus whose evolution we cannot control nor predict.