WHO warns of potential for more variants as omicron subvariant found in US

The head of the World Health Organization on Monday dampened optimism that the pandemic will subside in omicron's wake, noting that global conditions are still ideal for the emergence of new variants."There are different scenarios for how the pandemic could play out and how the acute phase could end," Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a WHO executive board meeting Monday. With at least 15.8 million people infected just since the start of this year, the ultra-transmissible variant is significantly boosting collective immunity across the US, which already has 63 percent of the population fully vaccinated.But such hopes have been dashed by the pandemic virus before. And although omicron causes proportionally less severe disease than delta, its lightning-fast spread is still overwhelming health care systems in the US and worldwide.And with so many people getting infected, the risk of new variants evolving is only heightened.