MOSCOW, February 21. /TASS/. As coronavirus changes a lot, both milder and more severe new strains are possible, WHO Special Representative to Russia Melita Vujnovic told TASS in an interview.
"Anything is possible, but there is no need to be scared. It’s possible with any other virus. Of course, coronavirus changes a lot. With Omicron, we've seen that some things get better or easier, so to speak, at the population level, so we'll see," she said, "But the virus, of course, can mutate one way or other."
The WHO envoy recalled that any virus is a very small substance that consists only of genetic material, and the more it is transferred from person to person - whether with symptoms or asymptomatically - the more actively it changes. "And in this rewriting of genetic material, different errors occur," she emphasized, "We don't know in what way the virus can evolve. Because of that, caution, surveillance, virus genetics surveillance, and, therefore, genetic sequencing is the most important thing that every country in the world can do. By doing so, they allow us to look at any new strain that comes along and the epidemiological data that tells us how the virus behaves."
Vujnovic urged the expert community stay focused. "The experts should have very good oversight of the situation. But I have to say that with influenza no one is easing up, and with avian flu no one is loosening up. There is constant oversight, it's just not in the media's field of vision, because this is relentless, hard work, which is done by top-level laboratories, like ‘Vector’, the Smorodintsev Research Institute of Influenza," she continued, "Of course, you shouldn't scare people, [by saying] ‘oh, we found something.' We should say, 'Yes, the information is such, we see something that requires an understanding of all people and, perhaps, a change in behavior."
The representative urged people not to give into fears because oversight is ongoing and the system is "well in place all over the world." "As we see with Omicron, it was discovered in South Africa. Well done. They detected it right away, and they warned everyone. So, hopefully, that kind of information will be there the moment something happens," she concluded.