A World Health Organization official has warned that COVID19 “is still a long way from” becoming an endemic disease like the flu rather than a pandemic.
More than half of Europe’s population is expected to be infected with the Omicron variant in the coming weeks, a World Health Organization official said on Tuesday.
Hans Kluge, WHO regional director for Europe, said that alongside delta infections, a new “west-east tidal wave” of omicron infections is also spreading in the region.
At this rate, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation predicts that more than 50% of the region’s population will be infected with Omicron in the next six to eight weeks, ”said Kluge during a virtual press conference.
In the first week of 2022, more than 7 million infections were reported across the region, more than doubling in two weeks, Kluge said.
Anyone who classifies the general risk relating to Omicron as “very high”, which has a recent technical report that has a “significant growth advantage over Delta, which leads to a rapid spread in the community.
A rapid increase in cases will lead to increased hospital admissions, can create overwhelming demands on health systems and cause significant morbidity, especially among vulnerable populations, “the organization said.
Another WHO official, Catherine Smallwood, warned that COVID19 is “still a long way from” becoming endemic. defined an endemic as “stable viral circulation at predictable levels and potentially known and predictable waves of transmission of an epidemic.
But what we’re seeing for 2022 is nowhere near that, ”he said. “We still have a lot of uncertainty. We still have a virus that is evolving pretty quickly and introducing new challenges. not so far that it can be called endemic.
