The UN health agency warns that the variant continues to cause hospitalisations and deaths and that even less severe cases are “flooding health facilities”. The head of the agency warns that failure to change the current distribution of vaccines could lead to a second phase of “even more destructive” inequality.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) warned on Tuesday that while the omicron variant may be less serious, the narrative that it is a mild disease “is misleading”, undermining the overall response to the disease and claiming more lives.

TDB keeps you informed. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram

“Make no mistake, Omicron is causing hospitalisations and deaths, and even the less severe cases are flooding health facilities,” he said.

This was the reaction of the Organisation’s Director-General to the rapid deployment of the variant which, in his own words, “continues to rage” around the world with 18 million new cases reported in the past week.

Despite the relatively good news that the number of deaths is holding steady, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus expressed concern about the impact of omicron on “exhausted” health workers and “overstretched” health systems.

“In some countries, cases seem to have peaked, giving hope that the worst of this latest wave is over, but no country is out of the woods yet,” he warned, reiterating his concern about low vaccination rates in many countries.

“People are at much greater risk of serious illness and death if they are not vaccinated,” he warned.

Tedros said the virus continues to circulate “too intensely” and that the next few weeks will be “critical” for health workers and health systems.

“I urge everyone to do everything they can to reduce the risk of infection so that they can help relieve the pressure on the system. Now is not the time to give up and wave the white flag,” he stressed.

COVAX mechanism has already delivered one billion doses of vaccine
While welcoming the delivery of one billion doses of coronavirus vaccine, a milestone reached over the weekend, Tedros said the milestone “is not enough” and that “we still need to do more” in terms of vaccine delivery.

“The vaccines may be less effective in preventing infection and transmission of omicron than they were with previous variants, but they are still very good at preventing serious illness and death,” a fact that is essential to avoid hospital overcrowding.

The agency’s director pointed out that the pandemic is not close to ending and that with the rapid spread of Omicron globally, new variants will probably emerge, which is why he described its monitoring and evaluation as “fundamental”.

To this end, he explained that new vaccines are being prepared and their performance against both Omicron and other variants is being evaluated.

“I am concerned that unless we change the current model, we will enter a second, even more, destructive phase of vaccine inequality. We need to make sure that we share current vaccines equitably and establish a global vaccine production pool,” he said.

Referring to changes in vaccine composition in the face of new variants, Dr Mike Ryan, the organisation’s director of emergencies, noted that WHO does not currently recommend them for the protection reasons previously outlined by Tedros.

However, he insisted on the need to gather more information and establish an “open and transparent debate” based on “global needs”, rather than an individual company’s decision “dictating what the world needs”.

More COVID-19 drugs, same challenges
On the two new COVID-19 drugs approved last Friday by the Organisation, a rheumatoid arthritis drug called baricitinib and a monoclonal antibody called sotrovimab, he stressed that they once again present a familiar challenge: their high prices and low supply lead to limited access.
“We urge manufacturers to use the WHO’s Pooled Access to COVID-19 Technologies to share technology, know-how and voluntary licensing to facilitate the scaling up of production capacity globally, which would save the greatest number of lives,” he demanded,

WHO does not prioritise saliva testing over others
Asked whether saliva-based coronavirus tests might be more efficient in detecting the omicron variant, Dr Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s lead epidemiologist, replied that they recommend all commercially available tests: antigen tests, PCR tests and saliva-based tests.

“This is not the time to make a massive shift to recommend one or the other, what we really need to do globally is to ensure that tests are accessible, affordable and reliable in all countries. And that these tests are linked to performance so that the patient who undergoes them knows what to do,” he said.

Van Kerkhove said that one of the main goals remains to reduce the transmission of the virus in all countries.

“That is why we have been working to ensure access to affordable and reliable testing. We would like to see more use of antigen-based tests because they are cheaper. They are usually much cheaper. They tend to be quicker in terms of getting results.