Regarding the claim that Corona 19 will mutate and eventually weaken like a cold, voices have come out that we should be wary of such vague predictions.



According to the Guardian, a British daily newspaper, Professor Neil Ferguson, the head of the outbreak analysis and modeling group at Imperial College London, expressed this view at a meeting held in the House of Representatives on the 1st of local time on the topic of countermeasures to Omicron, a new variant of COVID-19.



Professor Ferguson points out that while the coronavirus spreads more easily through evolution, it may not make it any less dangerous.



Transmission power and risk are basically unrelated.



"The virus is only interested in replicating and getting out of the respiratory tract quickly in the human body, it doesn't care who dies after ten days or not," Ferguson said.



He emphasized that while some viruses become less dangerous over time, not all are equal.



In particular, alpha and delta, the COVID-19 mutations that caused numerous severe cases, were pointed out as representative cases that are different from conventional wisdom.



"From what we've seen so far, alpha mutations have a slightly higher risk of severe severity than the original virus, and delta mutations have a higher severity risk," Ferguson said.



Regarding the dangers of omicron mutations, Professor Ferguson emphasized uncertainty, but took a cautionary tale.



Professor Ferguson said, "It is too early to judge whether the omicron mutation will cause more severe or milder symptoms than previous mutations."



However, he added, "the trend so far has been towards higher risk rather than lower risk. Fortunately, now that we can fight it with better treatments, the chances of survival for severely ill patients are much greater than at the beginning of the pandemic."



Omicron mutations, discovered in Botswana and South Africa, have spread to more than 20 countries around the world with strong radio waves.




Countries around the world are anxiously awaiting the results of the analysis from the academic community, worrying about the possibility that the Omicron mutation will invalidate existing vaccines with immune evasion.



Professor Ferguson predicted that the study would take three to four weeks to estimate the transmission power of the omicron mutation and the effectiveness of the vaccine.



“You have to be patient,” he said.



(Photo courtesy of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), Yonhap News)