Global spike in Covid cases may lead to dangerous variants

LONDON: The third wave of Covid-19 lashing countries across the world is creating fertile breeding grounds for extra infectious and probably vaccine-resistant new variants, scientists warn.

The World Health Organisation has announced an 80 per cent average increase over the past four weeks in five of the health agency's six regions, a jump largely fuelled by the Delta variant.

According to virologists, the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes Covid-19, might have already developed into extra threatening kinds which have, to date, evaded detection since they have not infected sufficient people, the Financial Times reported.

"We've been surprised more than once by the evolution of variants, though maybe we shouldn't have been because the virus only recently moved into humans and is still adapting to its new hosts," Nick Loman, professor of microbial genomics at Birmingham University in the UK, said, it reported.

"We've been humbled by this virus before and no one can predict confidently what will happen in the future."

Covid infections have surged to a mean of 540,000 per day, and a mean of just about 70,000 weekly deaths, the WHO stated this week. Faster rate of vaccination can reduce the probability of emergence of a resistant strain. (IANS)

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