New COVID-19 variants that emerge could cause more serious illness and fatalities than previous strains, some scientists warn.
told the Guardian“There will be more variants after Omicron and if they are more transmissible they will dominate. In addition, they may cause different patterns of illness, in other words they may turn out to be more lethal or have more long-term consequences,” David Nabarro, a special envoy on Covid-19 for the World Health Organization, told the outlet.
“The idea that virus variants will continue to get milder is wrong. A new one could turn out to be even more pathogenic than the Delta variant, for example,” he told the Observer. “The Omicron variant did not come from the Delta variant. It came from a completely different part of the virus’s family tree,” Edinburgh University Professor Mark Woolhouse told the Guardian.Tejas Sandhu / SOPA Images/Sipa USAJason Alden/Bloomberg via Getty Images
The uncertainty about future variants should be factored into whether countries lift retrictions that were reimposed during the Omicron wave, experts said.