The World Health Organization's emergency committee unanimously agreed that now is not the time to lower the guard on Covid-19, the group's head told a press conference yesterday.

"The decision was unanimous that it is not yet the time," said Didier Houssin, after the committee concluded that the pandemic still constituted a public health emergency of international concern -- the highest level of alert that the WHO can sound.

This comes as the UN health body in its weekly update had also stressed that countries should continue surveillance, where possible, and rapid data sharing on publicly available databases.

According to WHO, the SARS-CoV-2 virus continues to evolve. With such intense transmission worldwide, further variants, including recombinants, will emerge. "This is expected."

It also informed that it is continuing to monitor "several descendent lineages" of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus.

The descendent lineages under the Omicron Variant of Concern include BA.1, BA.2, BA.3 as well as now BA.4 and BA.5. It also includes BA.1/BA.2 circulating recombinant forms, such as XE.

The update said that the Omicron variant remains the dominant variant circulating globally.

"A small number of sequences of BA.4 and BA.5 descendent lineages have now been detected in a few countries. Both have additional mutations in the Spike region (S:L452R, S:F486V) and unique mutations outside of Spike. The S:L452R and S:F486V mutations are associated with potential immune escape characteristics," said WHO.