At least 90% of the world’s population has some form of immunity to Covid-19, World Health Organization (WHO) director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Friday, while warning of dwindling vigilance. This leaves the door open for the emergence of a new variant that could spread and displace the currently dominant Omicron variant, Tedros said at a news conference.
“According to WHO estimates, at least 90% of the world’s population currently has some form of immunity to the SARS-CoV-2 virus, either through previous infection or vaccination,” he added, referring to that for the Covid-19 pandemic responsible virus.
The pandemic is not over yet
The WHO chief warned against the temptation to hastily claim that the nascent phase of the pandemic is over. “We’re not there yet,” he said.
“Gaps in surveillance, testing, sequencing and vaccination continue to create perfect conditions for the emergence of a worrying new variant that could result in significant mortality,” he warned.
500 subvariants of Omicron
The Omicron variant, declared a new variant of concern by the WHO a year ago, has since spread around the world and has proven to be far more contagious than its predecessor, Delta.
According to Tedros, there are currently more than 500 subvariants of Omicron in circulation, all of which are highly contagious and have mutations that allow them to cross immune barriers more easily, although they cause less severe forms of the disease than the previous variants.
A total of 6.6 million deaths were reported by countries to the WHO, while nearly 640 million confirmed cases were recorded. But the real toll is much higher, according to the WHO. Over the past week, more than 8,500 deaths from Covid-19 have been recorded, “which is unacceptable after three years of the pandemic when we have so many tools to prevent infection and save lives,” Tedros said.