“Omicron will not be the last variant that you will hear us talking about,” Maria Van Kerkhove, PhD, the WHO’s technical lead on COVID-19, said Jan. 25. “The next variant of concern will be more fit, and what we mean by that is it will be more transmissible, because it will have to overtake what is currently circulating.”…beckershospitalreview.com, Erica Carbajal, January 26th, 2022
The bottom line is that “variants are a wild card,” Dr. Van Kerkhove said, adding that officials are still learning about the virus and don’t have a complete picture into its future trajectory.
“It is dangerous to assume that omicron will be the last variant, or that we are in the endgame,” he said.
“What we do know is vaccines work. Vaccines prevent people from needing hospitalizations and prevent people from dying,” she said.