SWITZERLAND: The Omicron variant has been detected in 40 countries but no deaths have yet been reported, the WHO said on Friday, as authorities worldwide rushed to stem the heavily mutated COVID-19 strain’s spread amid warnings that it could damage the global economic recovery.
The US and Australia became the latest countries to confirm locally transmitted cases of the variant. The WHO has warned it could take weeks to determine how infectious the variant is, whether it causes more severe illness 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 new variant’s spread has led to warnings that it could cause more than half of Europe’s COVID-19 cases in the next few months. The new variant could also slow global economic recovery, just as the Delta strain did, International Monetary Fund chief Kristalina Georgieva said on Friday. A preliminary study by researchers in South Africa, where the variant was first reported on November 24, suggests it is three times more likely to cause reinfections compared to the Delta or Beta strains. Meanwhile, the World Health Organization (WHO) urged countries to boost healthcare capacity and vaccinate their people to fight a surge in COVID-19 cases driven by the Omicron variant, saying that travel curbs could buy time but alone were not the answer.
“Border controls can buy time but every country and every community must prepare for new surges in cases,” Takeshi Kasai, the WHO’s Eestern Pacific Director, told a media briefing. Also Read
“People should not only rely on border measures. What is most important is to prepare for these variants with potential high transmissibility. So far the information available suggests we don’t have to change our approach.”
Meanwhile, the International Monetary Fund is likely to lower its global economic growth estimates due to the new Omicron variant of the coronavirus, the global lender’s chief said on Friday in another sign of the turmoil unleashed by the ever-changing pandemic.
“A new variant that may spread very rapidly can dent confidence, and in that sense, we are likely to see some downgrades of our October projections for global growth,” IMF managing director Kristalina Georgieva said.
Meanwhile, Bangladesh’s COVID-19 vaccination drive has achieved a historic milestone of administering more than 100 million vaccine doses, officials said.
According to the figure released on Thursday by the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) under the Ministry of Health, a total of 100,002,123 vaccine doses were administered as of Wednesday, including 73,172,360 Chinese vaccine doses, Xinhua reported. Of those, 62,733,739 were administered as first dose and 37,268,384 shots as second dose. It took Bangladesh about 10 months to reach the milestone of administering more than 100 million vaccine doses. Bangladesh began the COVID-19 vaccination drive in January to contain the pandemic that had spread across the country.
Meanwhile, The Cook Islands on Saturday recorded its first case of COVID-19 since the pandemic began, as the South Pacific country edges toward reopening its borders to tourists.
The nation of around 17,000 people has one of the highest vaccination rates globally, with 96 percent of the eligible population double-dosed.
The virus was detected in a 10-year-old boy quarantined after arriving on a repatriation flight with his family on Thursday, Prime Minister Mark Brown said in a statement. The boy was believed to have flown in from New Zealand.
– THE HINDU, THE HINDUSTAN TIMES,INDIA TODAY