WHO warns there is a high likelihood of new, more dangerous variants

“The pandemic is far from over,” said the experts, responsible for advising the director general of the WHO. “There is a high probability that disturbing new variants will emerge and be transmitted, perhaps more dangerous and more difficult to control” than those already recorded, they added.

“Recent trends are worrying. Eighteen months after the declaration of the international health emergency, we are still chasing the coronavirus,” said the chairman of this committee, Frenchman Didier Houssin, at a press conference.

So far, the WHO has identified four variants that can be described as disturbing: Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta. The latter, isolated for the first time in India, is spreading at high speed around the world causing a strong rebound in the pandemic, as it is much more contagious than the others and shows a little more resistance to vaccines, although they continue to protect. in the most severe cases of covid-19.

Houssin made two main recommendations: to defend equitable access to vaccines and not to take unscientifically justified initiatives, such as a third dose, as proposed by the Pfizer / BioNTech group in particular.

We must “continue to tirelessly advocate for equitable access and distribution of vaccines around the world, promoting dose exchange, local production, liberation of intellectual property rights, as well as technology transfer,” increasing production capacity and, of course, the funding needed to achieve all of this, ”Houssin enumerated.

The inequality of access to vaccines has been denounced for months by the WHO, NGOs and the countries which suffer from it. While the United States or the European Union (EU) intend to vaccinate the vast majority of their populations in the coming weeks, the most disadvantaged countries manage to protect only 1% of theirs.