Nagpur: The World Health Organisation (WHO) on Tuesday warned the countries and said that the Omicron variant was spreading at an unprecedented rate and urged the countries to act as vaccine giant Pfizer said its Covid-19 pill was effective against the newly-discovered variant.
The global health body also claimed that the Omicron variant which has been considered as the ‘variant of concern’ will likely outpace Delta which is currently the dominant variant across the globe. The WHO also said the variant could be detected with existing tests and current treatment would work.
While addressing a press conference, WHO officials said, “It is spreading faster than the Delta variant in South Africa where Delta circulation was low, but also appears to spread more quickly than the Delta variant in other countries where the incidence of Delta is high, such as in the UK.” It further added that with the available data, it is likely that Omicron will outpace the Delta variant where community transmission occurs.
WHO also said more data was needed to understand the clinical severity of the Omicron variant and preliminary data from South Africa suggests it may be less severe than the Delta variant.
