Although Omicron causes milder symptoms than the previous Corona variant, a number of parties are concerned about the potential for new variants to emerge that may trigger more dangerous symptoms. Isn’t the higher the COVID-19 vaccination coverage, the weaker the Corona virus will be?
“Our concern is that we don’t know because Sars-CoV-2 has unpredictable characteristics. We know that Sars-CoV-2 is a virus that is very easy to mutate,” said an epidemiologist from Airlangga University (Unair), Windhu Purnomo. in a virtual press conference entitled ‘Knowing Various Combinations of COVID-19 Vaccines and How Much Booster is Required’, Thursday (24/2/2022).
“He always appears new variants even though the variants that are being considered are only five according to WHO (World Health Organization). But actually there are thousands of variants that appear far away. They can still appear,” he added.
The COVID-19 vaccination clearly reduces the risk of severe symptoms. However, according to Windhu, the high coverage of COVID-19 vaccination in one country does not guarantee that new variants of Corona with more severe symptoms can be prevented. Because as long as there are other countries with inadequate vaccination coverage, virus mutations will continue to occur.
“If there are other countries whose vaccination coverage is very far below ours, surely there are many who still only have coverage of two doses with 30 percent or less, that’s still a lot,” he explained.
“That’s what we are worried about that new variants will emerge which might be more infectious even though we hope the virulence will be lower, it makes us continue to panic. That’s why vaccination globally really must be wide and even,” concluded Windhu.
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