Covid, WHO: “Tsunami of infections, Omicron variant kills”

The Omicron variant is causing “a huge and rapid tsunami of contagion that is crushing health systems around the world”. The director general of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, expresses himself in this way in the briefing on the covid emergency, underlining how “hospitals are becoming overcrowded and with a reduced staff”. In this context, other “avoidable deaths not only from Covid but also from other diseases are risked if patients cannot receive timely treatment”.

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“Even though Omicron appears to be less severe than Delta, especially in vaccinated people, it doesn’t mean it can be categorized as ‘mild’,” adds the WHO director general, noting that Omicron “just like previous variants causes hospitalization and kills.”

“The first generation vaccines may not stop all infections and contagions – he says – but they remain very effective in reducing hospitalizations and deaths caused by this virus”. WHO reiterates the need to distribute vaccines equally among all countries.

Giving “booster dose after booster dose in a small number of countries will not end the pandemic until billions of people are totally unprotected. But we can change that. At the current pace of vaccinations, 109 countries will miss the goal of completing the vaccination cycle for 70% of the population by the beginning of July 2022. The synthesis of this imbalance is all here: some countries are proceeding towards vaccinating their citizens for the fourth time, while other nations do not even have sufficient doses to vaccinate health professionals and those most at risk regularly “.

“The variants Alpha, Beta, Delta, Gamma and Omicron partly reflect” the imbalance of vaccine distribution “because with the low levels of vaccinations we have created the perfect conditions for the variants to emerge. high covid cases so far in the pandemic. And for sure this is an underestimated number. “