New COVID-19 Variant "Probable" This Year, Top French Expert Warns

COVID-19: "We will probably have another variant arrive during the winter," Jean-Francois Delfraissy, French government's scientific council head said.

The French government's top advisor on Covid-19 warned Friday that a new variant of the disease would "probably" emerge in the winter months this year. The country is currently battling an unprecedented spike in new cases caused by the more infectious Delta variant, which was first recorded in India. "We will probably have another variant arrive during the winter," Jean-Francois Delfraissy, head of the French government's scientific council, told the BFM news channel. He said that he could not predict the consequences, or whether it would be more dangerous, adding that Covid-19 had "relatively limited" capacities to mutate.