Stealth Omicron is a sub-variant of Omicron and has been on the radar since December 2021. There are over 8,000 confirmed cases of Stealth Omicron, dubbed BA.2.

There is no reason to panic yet, as Dr. Meera Chand, covid incident director for the UKHSA, explained there is not enough evidence to claim whether this sub-variant is more deadly.

However, Dr. Gregory Poland, who studies the immunogenetics of vaccine response at the Mayo Clinic, gave us gloom predictions.

"Let me make a prediction, which will be hard for any of you to hold me to because we will all be dead by then, but your great-great-great-grandchildren will still be getting immunized against coronavirus."

He added that we are far from calling Covid-19 an endemic, citing that if you got a "flu vaccine this fall, you were immunized against a strain of influenza that showed up in 1918 and caused a pandemic."

He pointed out that both Covid vaccines and natural immunity after detecting disease are not offering a "lifelong immunity."

The viruses naturally progress, which is why Stealth Omicron is causing concerns. Currently, there are nearly 500 cases in the UK being monitored.

In India, the situation is again critical as in the past 24 hours, there have been 3,37,704 new cases of COVID-19. Japan and Poland also confirmed the biggest numbers of infections since the beginning of the pandemic.

In the USA, over 864,000 people died after contracting the virus.

Virologist Tom Peacock tweeted that "there is likely to be minimal differences in vaccine effectiveness against BA.1 and BA.2. Personally, I'm not sure BA.2 is going to have a substantial impact on the current Omicron wave of the pandemic."

The Stealth Omicron has at least 20 mutations, half of the spike protein.

BA.2 is likely to re-launch the epidemic, stated French biologist Florence Débarre. With the rising numbers of breakthrough infections, it is hard to say if it is time to accept Dr. Gregory Poland's predictions.