Switzerland: The World Health Organization (WHO) has estimated that 90 percent of the world’s population has some resistance to COVID-19, but also warned people that a dangerous new version might yet appear.
According to the WHO Director General Mr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, less vigilance were leaving the door open for a new virus variant to appear and overtake the globally dominant Omicron.
WHO estimates that at least 90 percent of the world’s population now has some level of immunity to Sars-CoV-2, due to prior infection or vaccination
Mr. Tedros remarked.
The Director General continued by stating that, “Gaps in surveillance, testing, sequencing and vaccination are continuing to create the perfect conditions for a new variant of concern to emerge that could cause significant mortality.”
It has been one year since the organization announced Omicron as a new variant of concern in the COVID-19 pandemic. Omicron has spread over the world and proven to be far more contagious than its predecessor, Delta.
Currently more than 500 highly transmissible Omicron sub-lineages are in circulation, many of which could overcome built-up immunity more easily, despite the fact that they tended to be milder than earlier versions.
Mr. Tedros also added that, “More than 8,500 people were recorded as having lost their lives to Covid in a week in November 2022, which is not acceptable three years into the pandemic, when we have so many tools to prevent infections and save lives”.
The latest real-world study of updated COVID boosters indicates that new vaccines by Pfizer or BioNTech and Moderna are likely to offer better protection fron COVID-19 compared with the original shots.
The study of more than 360,000 people proved that the boosters provide an increased resistance against new variants in people who have previously taken up to four doses of the older vaccine.