NEW YORK: The World Health Organization (WHO) chief scientist, Soumya Swaminathan, said on Friday that the world was not yet at the end of the COVID-19 pandemic as there would be more coronavirus variants.
“We have seen the virus evolve, mutate … so we know there will be more variants, more variants of concern, so we are not at the end of the pandemic,” Swaminathan told reporters in South Africa, where she was visiting vaccine manufacturing facilities with WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
Late last month, WHO had warned that the Covid-19 pandemic is far from over, as France, Germany and Brazil posted new records of infections.
Read more: French Nobel laureate who co-discovered HIV dies at 89
Focus is increasingly turning to animals and how the virus interacts with them, after at least two countries reported Covid-19 cases in creatures big and small potentially passed between them and humans.
A study published Tuesday in South Africa said big cats caged in zoos are at risk from catching Covid from their keepers.
Researchers found clues pointing to the infection of three lions and two pumas by their handlers at a zoo in Johannesburg, some of whom were asymptomatic.
