By ROGER M. BALANZA

The days of the Omicron, the deadliest and most transmissible variant of Covid-19, may be numbered.

The Department of Health (DoH) made the announcement on Tuesday as infections from Omicron, blamed for the recent surge in daily tallies of the coronavirus disease, continue to decline.

But DoH Undersecretary and spokesman Dr. Maria Rosario Vergeire said that while the Philippines is already “over the challenge of Omicron,” Filipinos should not be complacent in the fight against Covid-19.

 Vergeire said that while the country’s daily Covid-19 tally continues to decline, there is a very high probability of a new variant emerging.

The virus can still mutate and there is no telling whether new mutations, if ever, will be less or severely more transmissible or deadly, Vertgeire said..

“We are not in an endemic state yet. We are in transition toward getting into that endemic state. But for now, because we are seeing that cases are declining, we are seeing that the cases are milder in characteristics compared to the Delta variant but it does not mean that we are in that endemic state already. It does not mean that there will be no variants any more that will come in the future,” Vergeire said at The Manila Times online forum.