‘Unwise’ To Conclude Omicron Is Milder Variant: WHO Warning On Fast-Spreading Covid Strain

All health systems are going to be under strain as the cases are going up, WHO Chief Scientist Soumya Swaminathan said at a media briefing in Geneva.

COVID-19 Omicron variant | Representative Image: Getty

New Delhi: The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Monday the widely spreading Omicron variant of the coronavirus is causing infections in people already vaccinated or who have recovered, and that the world still knows very little about how to handle the new variant detected last month.

Speaking to reporters in Geneva, Reuters reported, WHO Chief Scientist Soumya Swaminathan also said it will be "unwise" to conclude that Omicron is a milder variant than the previous ones, based on the evidence that they have until now.

"... with the numbers going up, all health systems are going to be under strain," she was quoted as saying.

The WHO said Omnicron is spreading faster than Delta and evading some immune responses.

Swaminathan said this means the booster programmes rolled out by many countries should prioritise people with weaker immune systems.

"There is now consistent evidence that Omicron is spreading significantly faster than the Delta variant…And it is more likely people vaccinated or recovered from COVID-19 could be infected or re-infected," said WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, according to the Reuters report.

Postpone Festive Gatherings: WHO

With the holiday season beginning soon, Tedros said, the festivities would lead to "increased cases, overwhelmed health systems and more deaths" in many places as he urged people to postpone gatherings.

"An event cancelled is better than a life cancelled," the WHO director-general said.

The WHO officials, however, offered hope that the year 2022 would see an end to the pandemic.

"(We) hope to consign this disease to a relatively mild disease that is easily prevented, that is easily treated," WHO's top emergency expert Mike Ryan was quoted as saying at the Geneva briefing.

"If we can keep virus transmission to (a) minimum, then we can bring the pandemic to an end," he said.

The SARS-CoV-2, which was first detected in China’s Wuhan at the end of 2019, has so far killed more than 5.6 million people across the world.

Speaking at the briefing, Tedros said China must be forthcoming with information and data related to the origin of the virus.

"We need to continue until we know the origins, we need to push harder because we should learn from what happened this time in order to (do) better in the future,” he said, according to the Reuters report.