ATHENS – The scientist who was the Face of Greece when the Coronavirus struck in March of 2020, representing an advisory panel of doctors and scientists, said COVID-19 won’t fade away and will get worse.

The bad news came from Dr. Sotiris Tsiodras, an expert in infectious diseases who said the effect of the virus will intensify and be hard to stop because there are now five variants that vaccines are finding difficult to control.

That came in online comments to a meeting of the European Parliament’s Special Committee on the pandemic in Brussels, where he said that, “There is a need for a new generation of vaccines,” he noted.

That could add fuel to arguments by anti-vaxxers who refused to take shots in Greece and weren’t required to and now are being allowed to mix with the fully vaccinated, further spreading the deadly virus.

He also noted recommendations for a second booster dose for the over-60s and vulnerable groups by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) and the European Medicines Agency (EMA) although those aren’t mandatory and there is confusion about what advice to take.