Can COVID-19 Become More Lethal? Know What Expert Says

New Delhi: “There is a widely-held belief that viruses always evolve to become less lethal over time. I wish that was true. I don’t think that’s true,” said Dr Ashish K Jha, White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator on Day 1 of the five-day HT Leadership Summit 2022

He was speaking with R. Sukumar, Editor-in-Chief of Hindustan Times.

According to WHO, over 300 Omicron subvariants are currently circulating in different parts of the world causing a spike in COVID infections. Some of these variants are immune evasive, and some are highly infectious, but COVID over the years seems to have evolved so far to be less deadly than the original virus. Is there a possibility of a deadlier variant of the virus emerging?

“…there is plenty of historical evidence of viruses that evolve to become more lethal. I would say that I am very pleased to see, Omicron in general has been less severe than Delta, but if you think about it, Delta was probably more severe than Alpha or the original variant. So, we did see the evolution to be more serious. Now we see evolution as less serious. Dr Jha hoped that the evolution hereon would be either the same or less serious over time but he said he would not assume that is the given because viruses can really surprise.

Are the new emerging variants a big concern?

According to Dr Jha, right now, variants are a concern. “Here’s how I think about it. We are seeing very rapid evolution of this virus. When you speak to most virologists and you look at historical evolution of the viruses, the speed with which SARS-Cov-2, the virus that causes Covid-19 is evolving, is really remarkable.”

The expert said that the primary reason behind that is we have “so much immunity across the world between vaccinations and prior infections that it is putting an evolutionary pressure on the virus to find a way around that immunity.”