Be prepared for new COVID-19 waves: WHO Chief Scientist

United Nations, July 15: Be prepared for fresh COVID-19 waves, WHO chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan has warned, amid the onset of new variants that are more transmissible, immune evasive and growing concerns about greater hospitalisations.

There is mounting evidence that suggests that Omicron subvariants -BA.4 and BA.5 - are infecting people who have been vaccinated.

"We need to be prepared for these #COVID19 waves -- each new #variant will be more transmissible & immune evasive -- higher numbers infected will translate into greater hospitalisations & sickness. All countries must have a data driven plan to quickly respond to changing situations," Swaminathan tweeted on Thursday.

She was tweeting in response to a Twitter thread by Senior Advisor at World Bank Group Philip Schellekens who said that "we are seeing a global U-turn in COVID-19 mortality.

Following months of decline, it has started to rise again," which did not come as a big surprise "given properties of BA.5, relaxed attitudes towards infection control and 3/4 of the world not being up-to-date on vaccination."

Schellekens said the pandemic is intensifying in high-income countries and upper-middle-income countries are also seeing an up-tick in new cases.

He noted that the US, France, Italy, Germany and Japan are the "drivers of the global surge" among high-income countries and Brazil, an upper-middle-income country, is leading the developing world.

"Mortality rates have started to edge up slightly," he said, adding that the US and Brazil are currently the main contributors to global mortality. WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, at a press conference earlier this week, said he is concerned that cases of COVID-19 are climbing -- putting further pressure on stretched health systems and health-care workers.

"I am also concerned about the increasing trend of deaths," he said. The WHO chief noted that the sub-variants of Omicron, like BA.4 and BA.5, continue to drive waves of cases, hospitalisation and death around the world. Surveillance has also reduced significantly - including testing and sequencing - making it increasingly difficult to assess the impact of variants on transmission, disease characteristics, and the effectiveness of counter-measures.

"The virus is running freely and countries are not effectively managing the disease burden based on their capacity, in terms of both hospitalisation for acute cases and the expanding number of people with post COVID-19 condition -- often referred to as long-covid," he said. "New waves of the virus demonstrate again that the COVID-19 is nowhere near over.

with PTI inputs