An image under the microscope provided by the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases shows the SARS-CoV-2 virus (purple) in the cells (blue) of a COVID-19 patient. (Photo: AFP/VNA)

WHO senior emergencies officer Catherine Smallwood said Wednesday that the fast spread of Omicron could trigger a new variant. She said the more Omicron spreads, the more it transmits and replicates, which means the more likely it is to throw out a new variant. Now, Omicron is lethal, it can cause death, maybe a little bit less than Delta, but who's to say what the next variant might do.

Europe is in the midst of a fresh COVID-19 wave, with several regions recording over 100 million infections since the start of the pandemic, and more than five million new cases in the last week of 2021.

Smallwood said that Europe is in a very dangerous phase with infection rates rising significantly in Western Europe, and the full impact of that is not yet clear.