While many are closely watching omicron subvariant BA.2 and the so-called "deltacron" hybrid strain, some experts have suggested that new COVID variants could arrive in the coming months.
Based on how quickly new variants have arisen, some have predicted the next variant could arrive as early as May.
Public health officials in Chicago said they are "certainly expecting more variants to emerge," but it remains unclear if such variants will be more or less severe than previous strains.
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"There's actually no strong scientific reason to believe that as the virus evolves it's going to become less and less severe," said Dr. Isaac Ghinai, medical director for lab-based surveillance at the Chicago Department of Public Health.
The biggest indicator of how severe a new variant could be, according to Ghinai, comes from immunity and vaccination.
"Whether or not they become less severe, I think, is actually mainly dependent on us," he said. "And I think the biggest thing that made omicron less severe than previous waves, I think the biggest difference was in people being vaccinated, or people having had prior infection and being somewhat immune as a result of that."
That is partially why CDPH Commissioner Dr. Allison Arwady said she's concerned by COVID upticks being seen in other parts of the world.
As most COVID-19 restrictions are relaxed across Europe, including Austria, Britain, Denmark, Germany and France, the numbers of infections have inched higher in recent days. The uptick is driven in part by the slightly more infectious omicron descendant BA.2 and by people largely abandoning masks and gathering in bigger groups.
In the last two weeks, COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths have both risen slightly in Britain.
Elsewhere, South Korea had its deadliest day yet of the pandemic on Tuesday, with 293 deaths reported in the latest 24 hours, as the country grapples with a record surge in coronavirus infections driven by the fast-moving omicron variant.
China banned most people from leaving a coronavirus-hit northeastern province and mobilized military reservists Monday as the fast-spreading “stealth omicron” variant fuels the country's biggest outbreak since the start of the pandemic two years ago.
Arwady stressed that while the rise of COVID in other countries could be a sign of what's to come, it's not a guarantee.
"I do certainly have some concern, particularly about what we're seeing in Europe, but there are a lot of differences there," she said.
She noted that many countries currently seeing spikes, such as China and Australia, "were really aiming for a zero-COVID approach."
"What I think we've seen with omicron - BA.1, BA.2, doesn't matter - it is so much more infectious, so much more contagious, that countries that had been aiming for a zero goal, it's really not possible with a variant that infectious. And so what's important is that a lot of these countries, while they're seeing surges in cases, it's not turning into the, you know, sort of the severe illness, the hospitalizations because they're highly vaccinated. My worry is we are not as highly vaccinated as a lot of those other countries."
