Geneva:
The Omicron variant of the coronavirus is spreading faster than the Delta variant, causing infections in people who have already been vaccinated or who have recovered from the COVID-19 disease, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) said Monday.
WHO chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan added that it would be “unwise” to conclude from early evidence that Omicron was a milder variant than the previous one.
“… as the numbers rise, all health systems will come under pressure,” Soumya Swaminathan told journalists in Geneva.
The variant successfully evades some immune responses, she said, meaning the booster programs being rolled out in many countries should target people with weaker immune systems.
“There is now consistent evidence that Omicron is spreading significantly faster than the Delta variant,” WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told the briefing.
“And it’s more likely that people who have been vaccinated or recovered from COVID-19 could be infected or re-infected,” Tedros said.
Their comments matched the finding of an Imperial College London study last week, which said the risk of reinfection was more than five times greater and has shown no sign of being milder than Delta.
However, WHO officials said other forms of immunity vaccinations can prevent infection and disease.
While the antibody defenses of some actions have been undermined, there has been hope that T cells, the second pillar of an immune response, can prevent serious disease by attacking infected human cells.
WHO expert Abdi Mahamud added: “While we see a reduction in neutralization antibodies, almost all preliminary analyzes show that T cell-mediated immunity remains intact, which is what we really need.”
However, highlighting how little is known about how to deal with the new variant that was only discovered last month, Swaminathan also said, “Of course there is a challenge, many of the monoclonals will not work with Omicron.”
She did not provide details as she referred to the treatments that mimic natural antibodies in fighting infections. Some drug manufacturers have suggested the same.
AN END OF THE PANDEMIC
In the short term, Tedros said holiday festivities in many places would lead to “more cases, overburdened health systems and more deaths” and urged people to postpone gatherings.
“A canceled event is better than a life canceled,” he said.
But the WHO team also offered some hope to a weary world facing the new wave that 2022 would be the year the pandemic, which has already killed more than 5.6 million people worldwide, would end.
It pointed to the development of second and third generation vaccines, and the further development of antimicrobial treatments and other innovations.
“(We) hope to attribute this disease to a relatively mild disease that is easily preventable and easily treated,” Mike Ryan, WHO’s top emergency expert, told the briefing.
“If we can minimize the transmission of viruses, we can end the pandemic.”
However, Tedros also said that China, where the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus was first discovered in late 2019, needs to provide data and information about its origins to aid the response in the future.
“We have to keep going until we know the origin, we have to push harder because we have to learn from what happened this time in order to (do) better in the future,” Tedros said.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by DailyExpertNews staff and has been published from a syndicated feed.)