Patients receive care underneath a tent, erected on the compounds of a hospital to handle an influx of people suffering from the Covid-19 coronavirus, in Yogyakarta on July 13, 2021, as Indonesia faces its most serious outbreak driven by the highly infectious Delta variant. (Photo: AFP)

The World Health Organization's emergency committee warned Thursday that new concerning variants of COVID-19 were expected to spread around the world, making it even harder to halt the pandemic.

"The pandemic is nowhere near finished," the committee said in a statement, highlighting "the strong likelihood for the emergence and global spread of new and possibly more dangerous variants of concern that may be even more challenging to control".