Omicron COVID-19 Variant Found In 38 Countries, No Deaths Reported Yet: WHO
Mumbai: The WHO on Friday said that the Omicron variant of COVID-19 has been detected in 38 countries but it hasn’t seen any reports of deaths relating to the variant yet.
The United States and Australia became the latest countries to confirm locally transmitted cases of the variant, as Omicron infections pushed South Africa’s total cases past three million.
The World Health Organization has warned that it could take weeks to determine how contagious this variant is, whether it causes more severe disease and how effective treatments and vaccines are against it.
“We’re going to get the answers that everybody out there needs,” WHO emergencies director Michael Ryan said.
The WHO said on Friday it had still not seen any reports of deaths related to Omicron, but the spread of the new variant warned it could account for more than half of Europe’s Covid cases in the next few months.
International Monetary Fund chief Kristalina Georgieva said on Friday that the new version could also slow the global economic recovery, as did delta tensions.
“Even before this new version came out, we were concerned that the recovery, while it is ongoing, was losing momentum to some degree,” she said.
“A new variant that can spread too quickly can undermine confidence.”
A preliminary study by researchers in South Africa, where the variant was first reported on 24 November, suggests that delta or beta strains are three times more likely to cause reinfection.
Red Cross chief Francesca Rocca said Omicron’s rise was “the ultimate proof” of the threat of uneven global vaccination rates.
South African doctors said there has been an increase in hospitalizations among children under the age of five since the emergence of the Omicron, but stressed that it was too early to know whether young children are particularly susceptible.
“The incidence in those under-fives is now second-highest, and second only to the incidence in those over 60,” said Wassila Jassat from the National Institute for Communicable Diseases.
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