GENEVA / ZURICH – The World Health Organization warned of major alarm over a new highly infectious variant of the coronavirus that has emerged in Britain, saying this was a normal part of the evolution of a pandemic.
Even WHO officials shed light on the discovery of new strains that caused a number of alarmed countries to impose travel restrictions on Britain and South Africa, saying new tools to track the virus worked.
“We have to find a balance. It’s very important to have transparency, it’s very important to tell the public how it is, but it’s also important to convey that this is a normal part of the evolution of the virus,” said the head of emergency services. ‘WHO, Mike Ryan. he said at an online briefing.
“Being able to track a virus so closely, so carefully, scientifically in real time is a really positive development for global public health and we should congratulate the countries that do this kind of surveillance.”
Citing data from Britain, WHO officials said they had no evidence that the variant made people more sick or deadly than existing strains of COVID-19, although it appeared to spread more easily.
Countries that impose travel frequencies acted with great caution while assessing the risks, Ryan said, adding, “This is prudent. But it is also important for everyone to recognize that this is happening, these variants occur.”
WHO officials said coronavirus mutations had so far been much slower than with the flu and that even the new British variant was still much less communicable than other diseases such as mumps.
They said vaccines developed to combat COVID-19 should also handle the new variants, although controls were being carried out to make sure this was the case.
“So far, although we have seen several changes, several mutations, none have had a significant impact on the susceptibility of the virus to any of the therapeutics, drugs or vaccines under development currently in use and it is expected that this will continue to be the case.” said Soumya Swaminathan, chief scientist of the WHO, at the briefing.
The WHO said it hopes to get more details in days or weeks about the potential impact of the new highly transmissible coronavirus strain.
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