Some countries may see another wave of Covid-19 infection due to XBB subvariant: WHO chief scientist

Chief scientist at the World Health Organization WHO Dr Soumya Swaminathan on Thursday said some countries may see another wave of infections with the XBB subvariant of Omicron a variant of Covid19 virusTalking to reporters on the sidelines of the annual general meeting of the Developing Countries Vaccine Manufacturers Network DCVMN here she clarified that as of now there was no data from any country to suggest that these new variants are clinically more severeThere 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 immuneevasive which means it can overcome the antibodies So slightly that we may see another wave of infections in some countries because of XBB she saidSwaminathan said they are also tracking derivatives of BA5 and BA1 which are also more transmissible and immuneevasiveAs the virus evolves it is going to evolve more and more transmissible she saidAs of now there is no data from any country to suggest these new subvariants are more clinically severe she clarifiedSuggesting the measures that need to be taken Dr Swaminathan said monitoring and tracking are the key stepsWe 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 saidAlso Read Thane reports 20 Covid19 cases active tally at 174According to her the Director General of the WHO has said that Covid19 continues to be a public health emergency of international concernShe added that 8000 to 9000 deaths are being reported every week worldwide due to the infectionSo 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 have now many tools and the most important thing is vaccines Dr Swaminathan saidAs far as vaccine coverage is concerned our goals are 100 per cent of people over the age of 60 and 100 per cent of health care and frontline workers Then we have a goal of achieving 70 per cent of the country but subgroups are more important because they are most likely to face morbidity and mortality she saidShe said that a number of deaths from elderly groups were seen when Omicron spread as they were not fully vaccinatedThe full vaccination schedule is actually three doses The primary two doses plus booster in the next four to six months But in many countries including India the uptake of the booster is low So we really encourage people to take the third dose she saidShe advised continuing to use masks for protection from infectionWhile vaccines are still protecting us from severe disease and hospitalization the risk of long Covid conditions seems to increase with each infection So it is not benign We should not be too casual by saying that it is okay to get the infectionMany people just think that it is just like the flu or any other respiratory infection but more and more data is coming out on how Covid is affecting all organ systems and not just the respiratory route It also affects the cardiovascular system and the inflammatory environment So we have seen the risk of diabetes doubling we have seen the risk of heart attacksand other neurocognitive problems Dr Swaminathan addedThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever