BEIJING, Feb. 9 -- According to statistics released by the World Health Organization, the threat posed to human life by mutations of the COVID-19 virus is waning, a Chinese health expert said on Thursday.

Wu Zunyou, chief epidemiologist with the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, told a press conference that the proportion of deaths among infected cases related to the virus has plummeted from 2.33 percent in 2020 to 0.28 percent in 2022.

The percentage even dropped to 0.08 percent in December 2022, Wu said.

In general, the infectiousness and immune escape of the virus have increased as it continues mutating, but its pathogenicity has weakened, the expert said.

He added that the likelihood of a variant with higher infectiousness appearing in the future is small, and there is only a slim chance that the virus will reverse to the more pathogenic original strain or its Delta variant.