Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia – The World Health Organization (WHO) gave a poor ‘forecast’ about Omicron. The UN agency believes the spread is very fast and could burden the world’s health facilities.
WHO says Omicron could double over the next 1.5 to three days. As is known, this new variant of the corona has been reported to have spread in 89 countries globally.
Reported from CNBC International, Monday (12/20/2021), WHO said Omicron had spread rapidly in countries with high levels of population immunity. However, it is not yet clear whether this is driven by the ability of the virus to evade immunity, increased inherent transmission or a combination of the two.
The world health agency previously designated the Omicron variant as variant of concern on November 26, 2021, two days after the variant was detected in South Africa (South Africa). However, it is recognized that there is still much unknown about the Omicron variant, including the severity of the disease it causes.
“Omicron clinical severity data are still limited. So more data is needed to understand the severity profile and how severity is affected by vaccination and pre-existing immunity,” said WHO in its latest update.
WHO added that the limited data of the new variant from South Africa requires further peer-review. The WHO warns that with cases rising so rapidly, hospitals could be overwhelmed in some places.
“Hospitalization in the UK and South Africa continues to increase and given the rapidly increasing number of cases, it is possible for many health care systems to become overwhelmed quickly,” the WHO said.
Meanwhile in the US, Putin virologist and pandemic adviser Anthony Fauci warned the world was about to enter a “gloomy winter”. This is because Omicron is triggering a new wave of infections globally, increasing restrictions and straining hospital capacity.
“One thing that’s very clear … is the (Omicron’s) scalability is incredible,” Fauci told NBC News. “It’s… raging across the world.”
While there are indications that it is no more severe than the Delta variant, which is still the dominant strain at this time, Omicron is highly mutated. Its resistance to vaccines is also a concern, let alone its higher transmissibility.
“No matter how you look at it … when you have so many infections, even if they are not very severe, it can … in the next week or two put stress on hospitals especially in areas of the country with low vaccination rates,” he insisted.
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