The World Health Organization warned Wednesday that new coronavirus variants could emerge during the pandemic that renders the current vaccines useless according to a new report from CNBC News.
“As this pandemic drags on, it’s possible that new variants could evade our countermeasures and become fully resistant to current vaccines or past infection, necessitating vaccine adaptations,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a press conference in Geneva.
Tedros sounded that alarm as Covid cases hit record highs in many nations, including in the U.S. The latest surge, coming more than 21 months after WHO first declared Covid a pandemic, is fueled by the spread of the new and highly transmissible omicron variant.
Tedros reiterated his frequent calls for nations to work together to improve global supplies and access to Covid vaccines and other crucial health equipment. He also slammed the “populism” and “short-term nationalism” of some political leaders that he said has “undermined equity and created the ideal conditions for the emergence of new variants.”
“Misinformation and disinformation, often spread by a small number of people, have been a constant distraction undermining science and trust in lifesaving health tools,” the world health leader said. He noted that “in the huge waves of cases currently seen in Europe and in many countries around the world, misinformation which has driven vaccine hesitancy is now translating to the unvaccinated disproportionately dying.” READ MORE
