WHO chief warns of threat of more dangerous coronavirus strain

The threat of a new, more dangerous strain of coronavirus, against which existing vaccines will be powerless, is very real, Secretary General of the World Health Organization (WHO) Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at the Globsek-2022 security conference in Bratislava, Report informs, citing TASS.

There remains a real and clear threat of the emergence of a new, more virulent variant [of the SARS-CoV-2 virus] that can avoid the effects of vaccines, he said.

According to Ghebreyesus, the World Health Organization is concerned about trends in some regions. In particular, the number of reported deaths in Africa and the Western Pacific region is on the rise. Meanwhile, America reports an increase in both COVID-related deaths and morbidity. He said the pandemic is far from being over

The WHO chief emphasized that it is very difficult to predict how the virus will evolve.

According to him, it is clear that future strains will be more contagious than existing ones to overcome them. But it is impossible to predict how severe they will be [in terms of disease severity], Ghebreyesus said.

As of June 3, WHO received reports of 528,816,317 confirmed cases of coronavirus since the beginning of the pandemic and 6,294,969 deaths. During the day, the number of infected people increased by 486,278, and deaths increased by 1,380.