World / Any complacency now will cost lives: WHO chief on Omicron COVID-19 variant

New Delhi: Warning the world about the Omicron variant’s global spread, the World Health Organization (WHO) on Wednesday said that certain features of the variant suggest it could have a major impact on the course of the Covid-19 pandemic and the time to contain it is now before more Omicron patients are hospitalized. Briefing the media on the Omicron variant, WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that governments need to reassess national responses to COVID-19 and speed up vaccination programmes to tackle Omicron, though it is too early to say how well existing shots will protect against the new variant.

“We call on all countries to increase surveillance, testing, and sequencing,” he told a media briefing. “… Any complacency now will cost lives. We are now starting to see a consistent picture of the rapid increase in transmission (rates), although for now the exact rate of increase relative to other variants remains difficult to quantify,” he said.

“Emerging data from South Africa suggest increased risk of re-infection with Omicron, but more data are needed to draw firmer conclusions,” he added.

WHO emergency director Mike Ryan said that as the variant appears to be more easily spread, efforts must be redoubled to break chains of transmission. While some evidence might suggest that Omicron causes milder symptoms than the earlier Delta variant, it’s still early days to draw any final conclusions, WHO experts have said.

According to Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO’s Health Emergencies Program, although the evolutionary nature of the virus makes it more transmissible as it mutates, this doesn’t necessarily make the virus less severe, as has been suggested by some “urban legends.”

Whether or not a mutation turns out to be milder or more lethal is a matter of chance, he said. As studies of the latest COVID-19 variant are evolving, the WHO says it still needs days or even weeks for global epidemiological data to come in, be analyzed and then to draw any firm conclusions.

It’s also still premature to say that Omicron could result in a significant reduction in vaccine effectiveness, according to WHO Chief Scientist Soumya Swaminathan. The WHO has called on all countries to increase surveillance, testing and sequencing, and to submit more data to the WHO Clinical Data Platform using an updated online case reporting form.