The COVID-19 disease will likely continue to spread and evolve, but its severity will decrease over time as the public becomes more immune to it, a senior World Health Organization official said Wednesday.
According to WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, new variants of coronavirus will continue to emerge but immunity among the general population will continue to increase thanks to, among other things, the rise in the number of those who have recovered from the pathogen as well as the number of vaccinated.
2 View gallery
People walking around with masks in Jerusalem's Mahane Yehuda Market
(Photo: Yoav Dudkevich)
Ghebreyesus added that despite his optimistic predictions, vaccinations are still important, especially for at-risk groups since additional infection waves are likely to occur.
The WHO official added that his organization is preparing for two possible scenarios. The first is that from now on only less severe COVID variants will appear, meaning no upgrade to the currently used vaccines will be needed.
The other, that a particularly violent COVID variant will crop up and lead to the overall drop in immunization and to a consequent spike in global morbidity.
Ghebreyesus’s statement comes a day after Head of Public Health Services at the Health Ministry Ilana Gens revealed new data on the BA.2 coronavirus variant.
According to the health official, BA.2 is the dominant variant in Israel today and accounts for approximately 60%-70% of all infections in the country.
The Health Ministry added that the Omicron subvariant is 30% more contagious than Omicron itself, and that most of those who recovered from the original strain seem to be immune to reinfection by BA.2.
The ministry said, however, that illness in children infected with the new variant is more severe than among those infected with Omicron.
Earlier this month, the World Health Organization said it was monitoring another subvariant of Omicron, dubbed as BA.3, which so far appears to be less contagious than its predecessors and is no more dangerous.