New Omicron subvariant may cause fresh wave: WHO chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan

World Health Organization (WHO) chief scientist Dr Soumya Swaminathan on Thursday said that some countries may see “another wave of infections” with the XBB subvariant of Omicron.

But the Indian clinical scientist also added that till now no data is available from any country to suggest that these new variants are clinically more severe than the previous ones.

New Omicron subvariant- XBB

“There are over 300 subvariants of Omicron. I think the one that is concerning right now is XBB, which is a recombinant virus. We had seen some recombinant viruses earlier. It is very immune-evasive, which means it can overcome the antibodies. So slightly that we may see another wave of infections in some countries because of XBB,” she said.

Swaminathan informed that WHO is also tracking derivatives of BA.5 and BA.1, which are more transmissible and immune-evasive. As the virus evolves, it is going to become more transmissible, she added.

Measures to be taken

Commenting on the precautionary measures that can be taken to prevent the Covid surge, she reiterated that “monitoring and tracking” are the key steps.

“We need to continue to monitor and track. We have seen that testing has gone down across countries, the genomic surveillance has also gone down over the last few months. We need to maintain at least a strategic sampling of genomic surveillance so that we can keep tracking the variants as we have been doing and studying,” she further said.

‘Pandemic is not over yet’

The chief scientist stressed what Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of WHO, has maintained that Covid-19 continues to be a public health emergency of international concern, adding that 8,000 to 9,000 deaths are being reported every week worldwide due to the viral infection.

“So we have not said that the pandemic is over, which means that all precautions and tools continued to be used. Good thing is that we now have many tools and the most important thing is vaccines,” Dr Swaminathan said while emphasising the importance of vaccines to fight the pandemic.