The World Health Organization's chief scientist, Soumya Swaminathan, said on Friday that the world was not yet at the end of the COVID-19 pandemic as there would be more coronavirus variants.

"We have seen the virus evolve, mutate ... so we know there will be more variants, more variants of concern, so we are not at the end of the pandemic," Swaminathan told reporters in South Africa, where she was visiting vaccine manufacturing facilities with WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.