Darias says that omicron could already be circulating with a prevalence of 1%
The Minister of Health, Carolina Darias, confirmed this Thursday that the omicron variant, whose prevalence in Spain is 1%, “could already be circulating in our country” and that “everything indicates” that the boom in cases will continue after Christmas . He has done so in the Congressional Health Commission, in which he recalled that for now, there are 40 cases of this variant confirmed by sequencing, of which about half have not been linked to any contact travel with international travelers .
In addition, “two omicron variants have been identified in random samples of cases, which implies”, he added, that, although with a still very low prevalence of around 1%, “this variant could already be circulating in our country “. All this means that, on the threshold of a “period of high mobility” such as Christmas, “it is very difficult to make predictions about the evolution of these increases”, although “everything indicates that the upward trend will continue after parties”.
This Wednesday, the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, already pointed out that “we must wait” for omicron to be the dominant one on the continent by mid-January, thus displacing the delta. Faced with this scenario, the Minister of Health has insisted on the need to intensify the campaign to reinforce third doses and to maintain non-pharmacological protection measures because, in addition, this period of the year is a “favorable time for the flu, therefore you have to be twice as careful. ” (Eph)
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