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Syndication: Columbia Daily Tribune
(77WABC) — Some scientists warn new COVID-19 variants that emerge could cause more serious illness and fatalities than previous strains.
Experts tell The Guardian it’s impossible to predict where the next variant will emerge from — or its characteristics. However White House chief medical advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci suggested last week that the us is nearing the end of the “full-blown” phase of the pandemic and that virus-related restrictions may no longer be necessary.
“As we get out of the full-blown pandemic phase, which we are certainly heading out of, these decisions will increasingly be made on a local level rather than centrally decided or mandated,” Fauci told the Financial Times. “There will also be more people making their own decisions on how they want to deal with the virus.”
“The Omicron variant did not come from the Delta variant. It came from a completely different part of the virus’s family tree,” Edinburgh University Professor Mark Woolhouse told the Guardian. “And since we don’t know where in the virus’s family tree a new variant is going to come from, we cannot know how pathogenic it might be. It could be less pathogenic but it could, just as easily, be more pathogenic.”
As of February 12, average daily new cases of COVID are just over 178,000 compared to over 800,000 in mid-January. Experts said the uncertainty about future variants should be factored into whether countries lift restrictions that were re-imposed during the Omicron wave.
