Covid-19 pandemic not over yet, more variants will follow, warns WHO

United Nations, Feb 11: The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that the coronavirus pandemic has not ended, and there could still be more to come.

The WHO's chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan has said that she expects more variants will follow.

"We have seen the virus evolve, mutate ... so we know there will be more variants, more variants of concern, so we are not at the end of the pandemic," Swaminathan said during the visit along with WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

Her statement comes at a time when countries around the world have begun to roll back COVID-19 restrictions following decline in cases.

A pattern of exponential spikes in the infection rate was experienced as the highly infectious variant spread following its discovery by South African scientists in November.

However, the spike in death rates is less when compared to earlier variants, especially the delta variant that triggered covid wave across the globe.

It is controversial whether viruses are alive, but - like all living things - they do evolve. This fact has become abundantly clear during the pandemic, as new variants of concern have emerged every few months.

Some of these variants have been better at spreading from person to person, eventually becoming dominant as they out-compete slower versions of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

These mutations allowed the alpha variant, and then the delta variant, to become globally dominant. And scientists expect the same thing to happen with omicron.