Despite the easing of the pandemic, new variants of the Covid-19 virus may still endanger the health of the public.
With the easing of restrictions happening globally, the World Health Organization (WHO) said that the Covid-19 pandemic is not over yet as new variants may still arise.
This is quite ironic since WHO Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus said just months ago that the world has never been in a better position to end the pandemic.
He then followed up last Friday that the emergency phase of the pandemic is over but we are not totally at the end yet.
The current state of the globe, wherein the economy is sluggishly recovering and face-to-face communication is beginning to make a comeback, may also be the cause of new variants just like the Omicron and Delta variant from the past year.
Last week marked the one year since WHO declared the Omicron a variant of concern. Since then, the variant continued to spread and further mutate, now having at least 500 sub lineages of Omicron circulating around the world which still creates fear and caution to the population.
Ghebreyesus said that while Omicron tends to produce less severe disease than earlier forms, Covid-19 continues to pose a threat due to the virus' amazing capacity to evolve in ways that allows it to escape immunity, either from infection or vaccination.
“We have a limited amount of information about the variants these days because surveillance has declined, testing has declined, sequencing has declined and that means there’s less data to analyze.” Maria Van Kerkhove, an infectious disease epidemiologist who serves as the WHO’s technical lead for the COVID-19 response, added.
Due to this lack of information, WHO cannot properly track the mutating variant which leaves everyone in the dark about the possible new variants of concern other than Omicron.
Hence why the WHO continues to urge the governments as well as the population to get vaccinated and proper hygiene is also a must to avoid getting infected with the possible variants that Covid-19 has as the virus continues to change its behavior.
Governments should also concentrate on examining these risks and ensuring that no nation enters another state of emergency since doing so would send the economy into another tailspin and put people's health at danger once again.
Tags: #Covid-19, #variants, #WHO