Drop in Covid-19 alertness could create `deadly new variant`, warns WHO chief

`Today, there are over 500 sublineages of Omicron circulating. They are all highly transmissible,` WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.

New Delhi: The World Health Organization (WHO) chief on Friday (December 2, 2022) warned that lapses in strategies to tackle Covid-19 this year continue to create the perfect conditions for a "deadly new variant" to emerge. Speaking at a media briefing, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that since the emergence of Omicron, the virus has continued to evolve.

"Today, there are over 500 sublineages of Omicron circulating. They are all highly transmissible; they replicate in the upper respiratory tract and tend to cause less severe disease than previous variants of concern and they all have mutations that enable them to escape built-up immunity more easily," he said.

Stating that the last Saturday marked one year since WHO announced the Omicron variant as a new variant of concern in the Covid-19 pandemic, Tedros said that it has proved to be significantly more transmissible than its predecessor, Delta, and continues to cause "significant mortality: due to the intensity of transmission. 

"The number of weekly deaths reported to WHO has declined slightly over the past five weeks, but more than 8,500 people lost their lives last week – which is not acceptable three years into the pandemic, when we have so many tools to prevent infections and save lives," the WHO head said.

He said that the WHO estimates that at least 90% of the world's population now has some level of immunity to SARS-CoV-2, due to prior infection or vaccination.

"We are much closer to being able to say that the emergency phase of the pandemic is over – but we're not there yet," Tedros said.

"Gaps in surveillance, testing, sequencing and vaccination are continuing to create the perfect conditions for a new variant of concern to emerge that could cause significant mortality," he further said and added that WHO continues to urge all countries to take a risk-based approach that protects both public health and human rights. 

According to WHO, globally, the number of new weekly coronavirus cases remained stable (+2%) during the week of November 21 to 27, 2022 , as compared to the previous week, with just under 2.7 million new cases reported. 

The number of new weekly deaths also decreased by 5%, as compared to the previous week. 

As of November 27, 2022, around 637 million confirmed Covid-19 cases and 6.6 million deaths have been reported globally to WHO.