Spike in Covid Cases Due to Increased Social Mixing Over the Holidays: WHO

The head of the World Health Organisation (WHO) on Monday said he has been notified by Japan of a coronavirus variant in people arriving from Brazil that’s different from the ones identified in Britain and South Africa.

Japan was working with other nations, the WHO and other medical experts to analyze the variant.

The previously identified variants from Britain and South Africa are more transmissible, but the behaviour of this variant and the illness it causes are not yet known.

Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus urged countries to continue efforts to sequence the virus so that scientists can learn how to respond to variants.

Tedros said people had to keep following coronavirus restrictions and public health protocols "now more than ever."

"You might get fed up of hearing it, but the virus is not fed up with us. Limiting transmission limits the chance of dangerous new variants from developing," he said.

Even as numerous countries start rolling out vaccination programs to stop COVID-19, herd immunity is highly unlikely this year, the WHO warned on Monday.

Still, the majority of the world's COVID-19 vaccine supply has already been bought by rich countries.

The UN-backed initiative known as COVAX, which is aiming to deliver shots to developing countries is short of vaccines, money and logistical help as donor countries scramble to protect their own citizens, particularly in the wake of newly detected COVID-19 variants in Britain and South Africa, which many officials are blaming for increased spread.

Dr. Michael Ryan, WHO’s emergencies chief, said while there is some evidence variants may be speeding up the spread of COVID-19, "there is no evidence that variants are driving any element of severity."

He said the variants shouldn’t alter countries’ strategies for controlling outbreaks.

The WHO said most of the recent spikes in transmission were due to "the increased mixing of people" rather than the new variants.

Its technical lead on COVID-19, Maria Van Kerkhove, said that the spike in cases in numerous countries was detected before the new variants were identified.

Van Kerkhove noted that during the summer, COVID-19 cases were down to single digits in most countries across Europe.

"We lost the battle because we changed our mixing patterns over the summer, into the fall and especially around Christmas and the new year," she said, explaining that many people had multiple contacts with family and friends over the holidays.

“That has had a direct impact on the exponential growth that you have seen in many countries,” she said, describing the case count increase in some places as "vertical."

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