Since the emergence of the mutated Omicron strain of the virus, several countries around the world have witnessed an increase in cases of coronavirus.
Millions of cases have been reported worldwide, and the World Health Organization said that the highly contagious virus could infect more than half of Europe’s population by next March, while some US officials expected that Most people will get infected at some point.
The Director of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, warned, on Wednesday, that… The omicron is spreading at a rate the world has not seen Since the start of the Covid-19 epidemic, it “remains a dangerous virus”, although it causes less severe symptoms.
“Although Omicron causes less serious symptoms than Delta (the mutant that was dominant until now), it remains a dangerous virus, especially for unvaccinated people,” he said during a press conference.
This mutant, which was discovered in South Africa at the end of November 2021, has since spread widely in the world at levels unprecedented since the start of the epidemic.
Omicron’s less severe symptoms, especially for fully vaccinated people who received the booster dose, compared to the delta mutant, have led some to consider it a “mild” disease.
expressive
But Ghebreyesus warned that “more infections mean more hospitalizations, more deaths, more people who will not be able to work including professors and medical staff, and more risks of another mutant emerging that is more contagious and kills more than Omicron.”
“It’s not a mild disease, it’s a vaccine-preventable disease,” said Michael Ryan, WHO’s emergency official.
“Now is not the time to drop everything, lower your guard, not the time to say it’s a welcome virus, no virus is welcome,” he added.
Some hope that because of its rapid rate of spread, Omicron will replace the more dangerous mutants and allow an epidemic to be turned into an easier controllable disease.
For Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, who is responsible for managing the COVID-19 pandemic at the World Health Organization, “the virus is on the way to becoming endemic but we are not there yet,” and the situation is difficult to predict what will happen, such as the emergence of a new mutant.
“We do not have the same ability to predict as with influenza, which is seasonal, and we may get it with Covid-19, but we have not reached that stage yet, and therefore we are cautious in our expectations,” she added.
expressive
She explained that it was possible to put an end to the epidemic, but the condition of high vaccination rates all over the world, not only in rich countries, in addition to reducing infection rates.
“How the pandemic will end is entirely up to us,” she said.
The World Health Organization expects that the virus will “continue to evolve” and also expects that the infection will continue to spread among unvaccinated people and that the world will witness simultaneous pandemics, Covid and influenza for example, because people will start meeting again.
And Omicron’s less severe symptoms, especially for fully vaccinated people who received the booster dose, compared to the delta mutant, led some to consider it a “mild” disease.
The Corona virus has killed at least 5,503,347 people in the world since it appeared in China in December 2019.
The United States recorded the highest number of deaths from the virus, with 842,322 cases, followed by Brazil (620,238), India (484,655) and Russia (318,432).
The World Health Organization estimates that the total number of deaths may be two to three times higher, taking into account the excess number of epidemic-related deaths.