Direction: Read the passage carefully given below. Answer the following questions by choosing the right option out of the five given options named as (a), (b), (c) ,(d) and (e). Some words are also marked in bold in order to help you answer the questions.

As XXB variant of Covid-19 spreads rapidly in almost 17 countries, the chief scientist of World Health Organization (WHO), Dr. Soumya Swaminathan has alarmed that some countries may see "another wave of infections". She ______ (A) that as of now, there was no data from any country to suggest that these new variants are clinically more severe. Swaminathan was talking to reporters on the sidelines of the annual general meeting of the Developing Countries Vaccine Manufacturers Network (DCVMN) in Pune on Thursday. 

"There are over 300 sub variants of Omicron. I think the one that is concerning right now is XBB, which is a recombinant virus. We had seen some recombinant viruses earlier. It is very immune-evasive, which means it can overcome the antibodies. So slightly that we may see another wave of infections in some countries because of XBB," she said. Swaminathan said they are also tracking derivatives of BA.5 and BA.1, which are also more transmissible and immune-evasive. As the virus evolves, it is going to evolve more and more transmissible, she said. 

"As of now, there is no data from any country to suggest these new sub variants are more clinically severe," she clarified. Suggesting the measures that need to be taken, Dr Swaminathan said monitoring and tracking are the key steps "We need to continue to monitor and track. We have seen that testing has gone down across countries, the genomic surveillance has also gone down over the last few months. We need to maintain at least a strategic sampling of genomic surveillance so that we can keep tracking the variants as we have been doing and studying," she said.