The World Health Organisation (WHO), on Friday, the 3rd of December, announced that it has not received any report of deaths from the recently diagnosed Omicron variant of Covid-19.
The world heath body stated that it has begun collecting evidence about the variant of concern (VOC) as countries around the world begin another round of lockdowns to avert any health catastrophe.
Nonetheless, in spite of the growing number of countries reporting infections with the new variant, no deaths have been reported, WHO said.
The spokesperson, Christian Lindmeier told reporters in Geneva that, “I have not seen reports of Omicron-related deaths yet.
“We are collecting all the evidence and we will find much more evidence as we go along.
“The more countries… keep testing people and looking specifically into the Omicron variant, we will also find more cases, more information, and hopefully not, but also possibly deaths.”
Lindmeier advised people to be weary of the Delta variant which has caused 99.8% of sequences uploaded to the GISAID global science initiative with specimens collected in the last 60 days.
In his words, “Omicron many be on the rise, and we may come to a point where it takes over to be the dominant variant, but at this point, the very dominant variant remains Delta.
“The restrictions that were put into place in many countries just 2 weeks ago – economical closures again, lockdowns in some areas, closures of Christmas markets in parts of Europe – this was done before Omicron because of a rise of Delta cases. Let’s not lose sight.”
The WHO Spokesman added that, “The WHO has said it will take several weeks to get a full picture of the transmissibility and disease severity of Omicron and to assess how vaccines work against the new variant.
“What we need to do is we need to take all these observations, assessments and tests and get this information together and then have the experts look at it, carefully weigh it and come up with the assessment. That will still take some time.“
Lindmeier added that, “Preliminary data show that there is higher transmissibility. But that’s basically all we have so far.”
“At the present time, WHO is coordinating with a large number of researchers around the world to better understand Omicron. Studies currently underway or underway shortly include assessments of transmissibility, severity of infection (including symptoms), performance of vaccines and diagnostic tests, and effectiveness of treatments.
WHO encourages countries to contribute the collection and sharing of hospitalized patient data through the WHO COVID-19 Clinical Data Platform to rapidly describe clinical characteristics and patient outcomes.
More information will emerge in the coming days and weeks. WHO’s TAG-VE will continue to monitor and evaluate the data as it becomes available and assess how mutations in Omicron alter the behaviour of the virus.
WHO.int
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‘No Report of Death from Omicron Variant of Covid-19 Yet’ – WHO