New COVID-19 variants could emerge to replace Omicron, the most recent major variant, and the key to stopping them spreading is to pay attention to the treatment of mild cases, an evolutionary biologist said yesterday.
Wu Chung-i (吳仲義), an academician at Academia Sinica who researches evolutionary genomics, gave the warning in a speech to the general assembly of the Taiwan Association for Promoting Public Health.
Taiwan downgraded COVID-19 to a less serious communicable disease and ended most prevention measures on May 1.
Photo: Alissa Eckert, MS; Dan Higgins, MAM / US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention / Handout via Reuters
Calling for COVID-19 to be treated as an endemic illness such as the flu is irresponsible, because while seasonal flu viruses often undergo antigenic drift — a minor change to a flu virus — SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, continues to spread and evolve, creating new strains that could behave differently to the original virus, Wu said.
Since COVID-19 was declared a global pandemic in 2020, SARS-CoV-2 variants such as Alpha, Delta and Omicron have emerged.
After the first wave of infections in around late 2021, subsequent Omicron waves were smaller, giving hope that the pandemic would end, Wu said, adding that this came about because the high transmission rate combined with very mild pathogenicity of the Omicron variant helped build herd immunity.
However, the emergence of new variants could trigger the resurgence of the COVID-19 pandemic, Wu said.
“When the previous mainstream virus strain existed, no one expected another virus strain to rise,” he said.
For instance, whole-genome sequencing of the Delta strain first appeared in the US and Europe in March 2020, but it was latent for a period before becoming the main global variant from June to November 2021, replacing Alpha, Wu said.
Since the government downgraded the status of COVID-19, most medical resources have been allocated and efforts focused on diagnosing and treating moderate and severe cases of the virus, he said.
However, to stop the spread of viruses, medical and health providers should focus on treating asymptomatic and mildly symptomatic cases to break the chain of infection, he said.
Even if COVID-19 does not make a comeback, the probability of a new coronavirus pandemic that would have a similar impact to COVID-19 cannot be ruled out in the next seven to eight years, Wu said.
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