The Omicron variant will not be the last strain of SARS-COV-2, the Coronavirus which causes the COVID-19 disease, which will wreak havoc across the globe, renowned scientists have warned the world in a joint statement.
Every new infection allows the virus to mutate further. The Omicron variant already has a large number of mutations in comparison to its predecessors. Despite having a strong network of immunity from vaccines and previous infections, the Omicron variant is spreading at an unprecedented pace.
As the virus continues to mutate by spreading from one host to another, scientists are not sure how the new variants will behave and how it will impact the course of the pandemic. However, it remains to be seen whether the vaccines will work against new variants or not.
Speaking in this regard, Leonardo Martinez, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Boston University, said that the Omicron variant emerged in November last year and it has spread across the globe like a wildfire. It has turned out to be twice as contagious as Delta and four times as contagious as the original strain of the virus which emerged from Wuhan, China, in December 2019.
Leonardo Martinez added that the faster the Omicron variant jumps from one host to another, the more opportunities it finds to mutate further, possibly leading to more contagious variants.
Dr. Stuart Campbell Ray, an infectious disease expert at Johns Hopkins University, said that ensuring vaccination along with facemask wearing, hand sanitizing, and social distancing can help to curb the emergence of new variants.
Despite the Omicron variant being better at evading immunity than the Delta strain, COVID-19 initial and booster vaccination still helps in reducing the risk of serious illness, hospitalization, and mortality.
Dr. Prabhat Jha, an infectious disease expert at the Centre for Global Health Research in Toronto, said that millions of unvaccinated people across Asia, Latin America, Central America, and Africa are breeding grounds of new variants, which is a failure of the global public healthcare agencies in ensuring equal distribution of Coronavirus vaccines worldwide.
Louis Mansky, director of the Institute for Molecular Virology at the University of Minnesota, said that new and more contagious variants are inevitable in the coming months, adding that the virus will remain in control of the pandemic unless a significant majority of the world’s population is vaccinated against Coronavirus.
