New strains of coronavirus are likely to emerge, WHO chief says
The World Health Organization’s Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus said that emergence of new strains of coronavirus was possible. RBC reports.
According to him, Omicron is spreading rapidly, and new variants are likely to emerge after it.
Tedros Ghebreyesus added that although, on average, patients infected with Omicron strain have a milder form of the disease, one should not draw false conclusions. «Omicron leads to hospitalizations and deaths, and even less severe cases lead to an influx of patients into medical facilities,» he said.
The number of new cases of COVID-19 increased by 20 percent for the past week with 19 million people infected in the past seven days, the WHO says. At the same time, the organization reminds that these figures reflect only officially registered cases and the real number may be much higher. The mortality rate remained unchanged and reached about 45,000 cases.
